Director of Legal Access Programs, Acacia Center for Justice
Company: Immigratin Advocatres Network
Location: Santa Clara
Posted on: September 26, 2024
Job Description:
Director of Legal Access Programs, Acacia Center for
JusticeAcacia Center for Justice (Acacia) is a new non-profit that
seeks to deliver and advocate for meaningful and effective access
to justice and freedom for immigrants at risk of detention or
deportation. Acacia partners with an independent and accountable
nationwide network of immigrant legal service providers and
community partners.Robust access to legal information, orientation,
and advice is a key part of ensuring and protecting freedom and due
process for all immigrants at risk of detention or deportation. To
that end, Acacia and its partners operate and manage a portfolio of
nationwide legal access programs funded by the federal government.
These legal access programs provide legal orientation and
information and limited legal advice to people in deportation
proceedings, as well as to the custodians of children in
immigration proceedings, so that they understand their legal rights
in the complex, adversarial, and high-stakes immigration legal
system.Position:Acacia's Director of Legal Access Programs will
play a key role in protecting, strengthening, and expanding
programs and expanding robust and meaningful legal access for all
immigrants. The compensation range for this position is
$155,000-$165,000. The salary provided within this range depends on
factors including but not limited to professional and lived
experience. The salary range listed is just one component of
Acacia's total compensation package for employees. Supporting
Acacia staff-both personally and professionally-is our priority. To
do this, we invest in the well-being of our staff through other
rewards including generous paid time off, a comprehensive health
insurance plan, student loan repayment benefits, professional
development training opportunities and up to $2,000 annual for
education costs and fees relevant to Acacia work, employer-funded
retirement plan, and flexible time and remote work
schedules.Responsibilities:
- Creating a unified vision of core standards for provision of
legal access, orientation, and advice services
- Identifying and challenging barriers to robust and meaningful
legal access that prevent people in immigration detention and in
deportation proceedings from accessing the promise of equal justice
under the law
- Refining and transforming legal access programs to better
support and enhance the reach and impact of legal representation
programs
- Supervise Acacia's legal access programs, supporting each
Program Director to ensure optimal program functioning, to navigate
key stakeholder relationships, and, over time, to expand and
strengthen the legal access programs
- Collaborate with Acacia's Director of Technical Compliance to
provide consultation on technical contract issues that impact the
functioning and impact of the legal access programs
- Through collaboration with internal and external stakeholders,
including researchers, practitioners, and impacted communities,
identify and implement into Acacia's programs the best practices in
operating and managing legal access programs.
- Ensure the highest level of coordination among Acacia's various
legal access programs in all aspects of program functioning -
management, operations, training, research and evaluation, and
related areas
- Build relationships in the field and with and among other
stakeholders to press for access to justice and freedom for all
immigrants
- Represent Acacia in the field and among other stakeholders in
program, policy, legal, and strategy discussions regarding
immigrant legal access
- Build consensus in the field around the core components of
meaningful legal access, identify the barriers to legal access and
innovate and advocate for solutions to these barriers
- In collaboration with the Chief Programs Officer and Chief
Strategy and Program Innovation Officer, advance principles and
standards for meaningful legal access and orientation programming
and champion policies that promote meaningful legal access for all
people facing detention and deportation
- In collaboration with the Chief Programs Officer and Chief
Strategy and Program Innovation Officer, push the field toward
transformation of legal access programs to enhance the reach and
impact of legal representation programs, including by briefing
funders and other external stakeholders
- Work to forge and cement alliances, coalitions, and allyship in
the field even where disagreements about strategies, emphasis, or
goals exist
- Bring in new allies to the field, including allies from the
criminal defense, mental health advocacy, and community organizing
fields
- In partnership with key internal and external stakeholders,
envision and drive the strategic innovation of Acacia's legal
access work, including the creation of ambitious standards for
expanding robust, meaningful, and person-centered legal access for
people in deportation proceedings and immigration detention
- In collaboration with the Chief Programs Officer and Chief
Strategy and Program Innovation Officer, propose new legal access
models and program approaches, such as a strengthened Friend of the
Court model or other successful legal self-help models, and pilot
and measure the impact of those models
- In collaboration with the Chief Programs Officer and Chief
Strategy and Program Innovation Officer, propose new ways in which
legal access programs can strengthen and serve as the gateway to
expanded full legal representation models
- In partnership with key internal and external stakeholders,
study and assess the implications of other historical and
contemporary movements for legal access and orientation and pilot
the application of best lessons from that study to maximize the
reach of Acacia's legal access programs
- Work with Acacia leadership to ensure that staff on Acacia's
legal access programs have meaningful opportunities for growth and
professional development, including through fundraising and
relationship buildingQualifications:
- Advanced degree in Law or Public Policy or similar degree and
10+ years of relevant work experience in legal access or
representation services, immigration policy, or a related
field
- Demonstrated and robust understanding of the U.S. immigration
system and its history, laws, policies, and political dynamics, and
an uncompromising commitment to immigrants' rights
- Demonstrated understanding of how person-centeredness impacts
the reach and effectiveness of legal access and of the role of race
in how people have - or do not have - meaningful access to legal
information, orientation, or advice
- Experience supervising interdisciplinary teams, supporting
contract deliverables, and supporting staff of different experience
levels
- Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills;
the demonstrated ability to build credibility within the
immigrants' rights field; and the ability to engage and persuade
broader audiences without resorting to technical language
- Demonstrated capacity to engage in strategic planning and
innovation, especially to remove barriers to, expand, and
strengthen legal access for all immigrants
- Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with others
toward short- and longer-term goals
- Deep commitment to race, equity, and inclusion, and to treating
others, regardless of organizational hierarchy, with empathy,
patience, and person-centeredness
- In accordance with federal contracts, a National Crime
Information Center (NCIC) check is required for this position
- Zoom, Microsoft Office suite, Outlook, Slack, Samsung/iPhone
cellular phone, Adobe, SharePoint, VPN, Smartsheet access, and
other software applications as the need arises.
- Experience negotiating obstacles to access to justice for
people in carceral, detention, or institutional settings
- Experience providing legal defense to people who are detained
or incarcerated.
- Program management experience, especially of legal service or
representation programs that contain a training and technical
assistance component
- Additional degree or experience in a policy, management, or
program innovation field, including, e.g., an M.S.W., M.B.A., or
like degree or experience
- Experience with community organizing and connecting grassroots
ideas to innovative solutions
- Willingness and capacity (with support) to engage in
fundraising, particularly to scale grassroots innovations to expand
and strengthen legal defense for immigrants
- Knowledge of the immigrants' rights field, including previous
experience working with key field stakeholders
- Experience building partnerships with legal services providers
to meet the needs of people in jails, prisons, and/or immigration
detention
- Lived experience and/or demonstrated commitment to challenging
inequities and racism in the immigration legal system
- Demonstrated ability to promote team/coalition cohesion, to
build staff morale, and to function as an equitable team memberHow
to Apply:Email resume and cover letter to admin@acaciajustice.org
with Subject: ATTN: Human Resources / [Job Title], Acacia Center
for Justice.No phone calls, please. Only applicants selected for
interviews will be contacted.
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Keywords: Immigratin Advocatres Network, Santa Clara , Director of Legal Access Programs, Acacia Center for Justice, Legal , Santa Clara, California
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