Housing Paralegal/Legal Assistant (Bilingual Spanish-speaking)
Full-time, Exempt
Hybrid, (at least three days in office)
About Us:
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” - Nelson Mandela
At Open Door Legal (ODL), we’re pioneering the country’s first system of universal access to civil legal representation to dramatically reduce poverty and prove that the law really can belong to all of us. To achieve this ambitious goal, we’ve created an award-winning and best-in-class legal aid organization full of passionate, motivated, gritty, thoughtful, and team-oriented people. We believe that injustice is the heart of poverty, and we're looking for someone to join us in having a systemic impact on how we, as a society, ensure justice for all. We are currently based in San Francisco.
Overview of Position:
We are hiring a Bilingual Spanish-speaking Housing Paralegal/Legal Assistant to provide critical support to our housing team. We help low-income families stay in their homes, obtain housing, prevent homelessness, and ensure landlords address uninhabitable conditions. Even with positive legal outcomes, our clients can face a lot of confusion, fear, and anxiety over the next steps regarding their housing and cases. The Housing Paralegal/Legal Assistant is going to be the main point of contact for helping our Spanish-speaking clients navigate their legal journey with us as well as being a crucial part of building successful cases. Overall, this position is intended to be a challenging yet extremely rewarding experience for someone looking to make a difference in clients’ lives with an innovative, results-oriented, and fast-growing organization.
Day-to-day tasks include: providing basic rights advice (with attorney supervision), in-person and remote oral interpretation and written translation (both English to Spanish and Spanish to English), assisting with intakes, completing court forms for clients’ cases, triaging potential clients, coordinating timely service of process, physically filing documents at San Francisco Superior Court, communicating case progress to clients, and follow-up communications with clients including drafting letters and other correspondence.
You will be the paralegal/legal assistant for the affirmative housing legal practice and provide Spanish interpretation and translation assistance for the team, working with multiple attorneys. The work is fast-paced and will require you to be organized, think critically and dynamically, and demonstrate empathy and awareness in understanding the needs of our community.
This position will be in the office three days per week. We are flexible about your location preferences between our four offices in Bayview, Excelsior, Sunset, and Western Addition. You will report directly to our Managing Housing Attorney but will also work closely with our housing team.
Responsibilities:
- Embrace and embody our mission of universal access to civil legal aid and our values of passion, grit, dynamism, caring, and teamwork to ensure that everyone in our service area, particularly our Spanish-speaking community, with a viable housing problem gets appropriate help, including legal representation.
- In addition, interpret and/or take notes at all housing law intakes requiring Spanish interpretation, virtually and in person at our four offices. Eventually, be able to lead and run Spanish and English intakes and give basic housing brief service information yourself. This includes giving basic housing know your rights information to guests and/or clients directly.
- Provide clear information to guests and clients regarding their case, maintaining frequent communication throughout the process.
- Be responsible for the civil procedure tasks that support our housing attorneys in their civil litigation in San Francisco Superior Court, San Francisco Rent Board, and Housing Authority hearings on behalf of tenants.
- Advise clients and guests on proper small claims defense and affirmative small claims case initiations (with attorney supervision) and be the lead small claims coordinator with any small claims platform.
- With attorney supervision, draft pleadings, propound and respond to discovery, assist attorneys in drafting motions, and conduct legal research.
- As capacity allows, support housing team members, interns, and volunteers in meeting our organization’s mission in other ad hoc projects and tasks.
- Provide services and support to our low-income clients with sensitivity to and awareness of cultural, socio-economic, and disability differences. Continue to ensure our clients have a positive experience with us as measured by our client feedback survey.
Requirements:
- At least an associate’s degree or equivalent (a paralegal certificate is fine).
- Comfortable translating and interpreting from English to Spanish and vice versa legal information without assistance. Also comfortable performing client support and paralegal/legal assistant tasks in Spanish.
- Ability to commute to any of ODL’s offices three days a week to conduct in-person intakes and meetings and support the team’s in-office needs.
- Strong time management skills and the ability to organize time, manage diverse activities, and meet critical deadlines with minimal supervision.
- Have a high level of comfort learning and using technology and cloud-based case management systems. We use Salesforce, Dropbox, and Google Suite.
- Must genuinely enjoy and be motivated by working with low-income clients and be able to work competently with clients impacted by trauma (emotional, mental, and physical), including those at risk of homelessness and currently un-housed.
- Must actively demonstrate cultural humility and sensitivity to barriers low-income residents face when attempting to access the justice system.
- Must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. without sponsorship.
- Embrace and embody our values of teamwork, grit, caring, passion, and dynamism.
Bonus Points:
- Previous experience as a paralegal, legal assistant, legal secretary, tenant organizer, or client advocate.
- A paralegal certificate.
- Basic knowledge of California and/or San Francisco housing law.
- Experience with filing and interacting within the San Francisco Superior Court.
- Experience working with low-income and vulnerable populations.
- Experience working in a high-volume direct services legal aid or similar environment.
- Having lived a significant period of your life in San Francisco proper.
Starting compensation for a legal assistant is $70,500-$86,500; for a paralegal, it's $72,500-$88,500.
Benefits:
- Loan Repayment Assistance - for staff pursuing 10-year public interest debt forgiveness, we will pay the minimum payment on all qualifying loans so that you don’t need to worry about student loan debt (this is a conditional benefit).
- Medical/Dental/Vision Plan offerings at 100% coverage
- Paid mental health benefit
- Generous paid time off (four weeks vacation and two weeks sick/care)
- Flexible work hours
- Generous paid parental leave
- 401K/Retirement Account
- Strong organizational culture with an eNPS of 100
- We believe everyone is always learning. We financially invest in individual professional development for each staff member and provide many internal and external mentorships, coaching, and learning opportunities (conferences, workshops, etc.).
- We are a fun and hard-working office with best-in-class technology solutions for anyone who’s passionate about making a meaningful and measurable difference.
Applications submitted prior to April 17, 2024 will receive priority consideration.
Ideal Start Date: As soon as possible
Open Door Legal is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or any other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law including the San Francisco Fair chance Ordinance.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance or accommodations due to a disability, please let us know at whitney [at] opendoorlegal [dot] org.