Staff Attorney, Community Safety Program

The Opportunity 

Asian Law Caucus (ALC) seeks to hire a passionate, movement-oriented, and creative Staff Attorney to join its growing Community Safety Program. The Community Safety Program aims to diminish societal reliance on carceral systems – police, jails, prisons, ICE detention, surveillance, and supervision – in ways that will strengthen the low-income and immigrant Asian, Arab, Middle Eastern, and Pacific Islander communities we serve. In particular, we seek to disentangle police from immigration enforcement and to reimagine community safety by building preventative, restorative, and community-based alternatives to our punitive criminal legal system. Our work includes community education, legal representation, and policy advocacy on behalf of low-income immigrants and communities of color.  

The Staff Attorney will engage in policy advocacy, coalition-building, direct services work, and litigation to develop alternatives to our punitive criminal legal system while reducing the role of the existing system and disentangling police from immigration enforcement. This work will require the attorney to work creatively with other ALC programs and with community partners to develop and implement innovative strategies that shift resources and responsibilities from the punitive criminal legal system into effective, community-based solutions. It will also require the attorney to build consensus in cross-racial, cross-community coalitions.

The Organization

Asian Law Caucus (ALC) is the nation’s first legal and civil rights organization serving low-income, immigrant, and marginalized Asian, Arab, Middle Eastern, and Pacific Islander communities. Since 1972, ALC has fought to protect access to affordable housing in San Francisco’s Chinatown, litigated high-profile civil rights cases, advocated for the passage of landmark policy changes, and provided an array of services to low-income immigrants and communities of color. Today, with a staff of 60 we bring together legal services, community empowerment, and policy advocacy to fight for immigrant justice, economic security, and a stronger, multiracial democracy. Our work is rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area and California and expands to states across the country, including places where immigrant, Asian, Arab, Middle Eastern, and Pacific Islander communities are rapidly growing. 

Responsibilities

Day-to-day activities vary in this dynamic position and include the following:

• Engage in state, local, and federal policy and administrative advocacy on policing, surveillance, alternatives to the criminal legal system, and other community safety and crimmigration issues.
• Build, work in, and maintain strategic community partnerships with grassroots organizations and coalitions and provide legal and policy support to advance advocacy goals.
• Work with the Program Director, Managing Attorney, and other ALC staff to develop and litigate impact cases
• Work to support ALC’s Legal Clinic for Victims and Survivors of Violence, which provides holistic legal counseling to help clients clarify and meet their long-term goals for healing, safety, and accountability. This includes working directly with clients to choose and navigate non-carceral forms of accountability, healing, and other responses to harm; supervising and training pro bono attorneys who work with clinic clients; coordinating with ALC staff and external partners who provide case management and other supports for clients; and building external relationships that support the clinic’s work.
• Work with District Attorney offices, police departments, and other system actors to develop and implement policies that support ALC goals. These include restricting cooperation with ICE and with national security agencies, restricting various harmful police and surveillance tactics, making non-carceral alternatives easily available to victims, and supporting victims who opt for non-carceral alternatives.  
• Develop and present written materials, and training curricula for organizational partners. Develop and present other educational resources (including know-your-rights materials), training, webinars, and technical support to local and state policy advocacy coalitions, immigrant communities, and community-based organizations.
• Conduct community education and Know Your Rights events, as needed.
• Collaborate with Communications staff to develop stories with ALC clients and their communities and execute narrative-shifting strategies.
• Other duties, as assigned by the Program Director.

All ALC staff are expected to participate in regular check-in meetings with their supervisor/supervisees, staff meetings, team meetings, and other organization meetings, as required. This includes two (2) annual retreats, an anniversary celebration dinner, and meetings as needed in the San Francisco Bay area.

The above statements are not intended to encompass all functions of the position; rather, they are intended to provide a general framework of the position's requirements. Job incumbents may be required to perform other functions not explicitly addressed in this posting.

Desired Qualifications

• BA/BS and JD degrees and California bar membership are required.
• A minimum of two (2) years of lawyering experience.
• Demonstrated commitment to advancing the civil rights of low-income, people of color, and/or immigrant communities.
• Previous experience with coalition building, litigation, policy advocacy, and community-centered lawyering. Particular experience involving police abuse, jails, prisons, immigrant rights, and/or restorative justice is preferred but not required.
• Excellent research, analytical, writing, and oral communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to work with and facilitate consensus building among diverse groups of people, including in Asian, Arab, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, and Black-led spaces.
• A high degree of sensitivity and strong interpersonal skills are needed to manage relationships with external partners.
• Team player and collaborator who enjoys working with colleagues of diverse backgrounds and experiences
• Strong problem-solving and creative thinking skills.
• Bilingual skills in an Asian language or Spanish preferred