Director of Communications

POSITION SUMMARY

What this job is

Movement Law Lab seeks an agile, creative, and practical Communications Director who has a strong familiarity with the intersection of legal strategies and social movements. This person will be responsible for crafting and implementing Movement Law Lab’s overall communications strategy, elevating and managing our brand, as well as directing digital outreach and creating relevant content and collateral. The successful candidate must be committed to centering, elevating, and developing the voices, expertise, and experiences of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color as drivers of social movements, and lawyers as strategic, supportive partners of those movements.

OUR PURPOSE

Who we are

Movement Law Lab brings the power of lawyers to social justice movements. We transform the legal sector, training lawyers and legal organizations to go beyond winning cases to building collective power. We build legal infrastructure for grassroots-led progressive movements. We reimagine law, cultivating new ways to democratize, decolonize and deploy law. Together with people’s movements, we organize lawyers into a force for human dignity, multi-racial democracy, and ecological harmony.

Movement Law Lab’s team is rooted in seven core values of adaptability, interdependence, creativity, dignity, radical politics, integrity, and sustainability.

YOUR CORE COMPETENCIES

Who you are

We want someone who will thrive in this role, so we’re looking for a person with these qualities:

• You move with strategic vision, understanding the uniqueness and interconnectedness of MLL’s current and potential audiences, core messages, and communication channels, weaving all that together for greater organizational impact;
• You’re a builder, excited about taking our fledgling communications department and strategy, with a national and global reach, to a much higher level;
• You’re a meaning maker, interpreting and translating our team’s big ideas and hard work into compelling messages that cultivate lasting connections with our audiences;
• You cultivate innovation, always looking for the possible and the new, and creating an environment where others can also imagine their way into what could be.
• You’re a team leader, defining success in terms of a whole team, recognizing and leveraging the uniqueness of each team player, and being a force for positive interpersonal communication and relationships.
• You fully align with Movement Law Lab’s purpose and values.

JOB DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

What you’ll do

Communications strategy

• Develop and implement our organization’s public communications strategy in coordination with senior leadership and program teams.
• Analyze media and narrative landscapes to make sense of current events, identify opportunities and challenges in advancing our key narratives, and guide the organization to pivot accordingly.
• Ensure visibility of our work in earned media outlets and among funders, donors, and allies.
• Represent Movement Law Lab in legal and social-movement spaces where there is a special focus on messaging, communications, digital organizing, and/or media relations to ensure representation for Movement Law Lab’s expertise, programming, and strategic initiatives

Narrative, content creation, and digital communications

• Translate our team’s big ideas into coherent narratives and impactful messages, and then — on your own and through staff that you direct — package, organize, and sequence those narratives and messages into content that helps us build enduring relationships with our most important audiences.
• Grow Movement Law Lab’s recognition and persuasive effectiveness with our core audiences across all social-media and other digital channels, ensuring that internal and external comms deliverables adhere to our identity guidelines and strategic goals.
• In consultation with our Executive Director, provide creative direction for, project manage, and sometimes directly produce comms deliverables such as newsletters, e-blasts, donor updates, reports, digital campaigns, animations, and podcasts.
• Organize, maintain, and grow our email lists.
• Manage the maintenance and continual improvement of our website, and possible future sub-brand sites.

Media relations

• Monitor the media landscape and public discourse for trends and opportunities directly related to MLL’s purpose, core narratives, and strategic goals, keeping the rest of the organizational leadership regularly apprised of these trends and opportunities.
• Bring MLL’s voice to key conversations by quickly seizing coverage opportunities and issuing press and public statements, briefs, alerts, and quotes related to current developments in law, policy, and politics;
• Promote thoughtful coverage of our work and issues by building and maintaining relationships with reporters and other influencers;
• Support MLL staff in growing their media literacy and building their public- and press-facing skills as spokespeople and issue experts;
• Support MLL staff experts in writing, editing, and placing op-eds and commentaries for publication to advance and promote the organization’s programs, strategic initiatives, and expertise.

Management and administration

• Coordinate with executive director, programs, and fundraising staff to ensure communications strategies are aligned across the organization for our fundraising purposes.
• Manage staff and vendors involved in any and all aspects of communications production and administration.
• Manage and regularly report on our organization’s overall communications budget across multiple projects, priorities, and needs.
• As part of the organization’s leadership team, contribute meaningfully to organizational management questions and promote positive organizational culture, growth, and values.

YOUR QUALIFICATIONS

What you bring to the role

Required

• A demonstrated commitment to, and practice of, justice and equity in relation to race, gender, sexual orientation, and class.
• No minimum education requirement.
• 7+ years of experience in a professional, social-justice-oriented communications setting, such as a newsroom, public-relations firm, or nonprofit communications department.
• Experience writing, editing, and successfully pitching for publication, including earned media, press releases, and securing placements for op-eds, letters to the editor, and analysis pieces.
• Experience developing and executing social-media and other digital campaigns that engage and grow audiences.
• Experience developing and producing (on your own and/or in collaboration with junior staff and vendors) attractively branded marketing designs and collateral.
• Strong proficiency with social media, including familiarity with digital organizing.
• Computer Skills: a high degree of comfort with online and computer-based software such as Slack; monday.com (or comparable project-management software); Google Workspace apps; Action Network (or other comparable CRMs); Squarespace, Airtable; Canva; Adobe Creative Suite; Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.
• Physical abilities: ability to work 8-hour days, 5 days a week, at a computer.
• Location & hours:
  • This job can be performed remotely from anywhere in the continental U.S., provided that the employee has consistent access to high-speed internet. Partial reimbursement for access to a co-working space is available to all staff.
  • Must be available 40 hours per week during regular business hours with occasional evening and weekend hours.
• Travel: Must be available to travel by plane up to 8 times a year, up to 5 days per trip, for overnight events and meetings, in the continental U.S. and occasionally internationally.
• COVID-19 Vaccination: All NEO staff are required to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Requests for medical and/or religious exemptions from the vaccination requirement will be considered on an individual basis, to the extent required by law.

Preferred

• Experience doing communications work for a social justice organization that works in both a national and global context, including multilingual communications work.
• Experience producing communications content and strategies for and with lawyers, law schools or legal organizations.

INTANGIBLE BENEFITS

What you’ll get

Our culture

• Growth & Transformation: We are invested in your growth. We provide a range of opportunities for all team members to grow and transform including: a staff political education series, professional development funds, and leadership training and coaching.
• Willingness to Experiment: We believe the current moment requires us to do things that haven’t been done before. We encourage creative thinking and innovation. We use an experimental approach where we diagnose conditions, develop hypotheses, build and test betas, and scale solutions. If your brain works like this, you’ll fit right in.
• Love & Rigor: We pride ourselves on being an awesome place to work that balances love and rigor. While we are results driven and high-performing, we embody a culture that is people-centered, respects difference, positive, affirming, and fun.

JOIN OUR TEAM

How to apply

Applications must be submitted using a form linked to on our website. To apply you must upload a cover letter, résumé, at least two references, as well as two work samples. Because we are interested in both your writing and graphic skills, it is best if at least one of your samples showcases your graphic skills and that at least one work sample showcases your writing skills. We understand if perhaps you have multiple work samples that showcase both sets of skills combined — that’s great and welcome if that is true. Audio and video content that you can link to is also welcome. Submit whatever work samples best demonstrate your skills.

This opportunity will remain open until filled. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis, so applying sooner is better. Priority will be given to applications submitted on or before Friday 14 March 2025.

Movement Law Lab, as part of our fiscal sponsor, NEO Philanthropy, Inc., is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, women, LGBTQIA+ people, people with disabilities, and people with past involvement in the criminal-legal system are strongly encouraged to apply.