Associate Director of Training

POSITION SUMMARY

Movement Law Lab is seeking an experienced, rigorous, dynamic facilitator who can hold and agitate a room, design engaging agendas and training materials, coordinate our trainers’ collective, and help our training team massively expand our reach. While we are a legal organization, we think a lawyer or an organizer could thrive in this role — especially when they have had experience in law and organizing partnerships. The ideal candidate is a facilitation nerd with a passion for training lawyers to bolster and defend communities at the frontlines of social-justice struggles.

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. 

MLL has trained over 15,000 lawyers and legal organizations to move beyond winning cases to building community power. We nurture individuals, sharpen institutions, and agitate our sector so that we can leverage every legal hook possible for our people. Law is a tool and a tactic, not a means to an end.  We ground all our trainings in the simple yet powerful truth that organized groups of working class people of color–not lawyers, lawsuits or legal decisions– are the true engines of social change.

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

WHO YOU ARE

You will thrive in this role if you are this kind of person:

• You are a pedagogy & andragogy nerd who loves to develop curriculum and design transformative learning experiences; 
• You are a seasoned front-of-the-room facilitator with experience training teams of lawyers and organizers and leading capacity-building interventions in one or more movements;
• You see the forest for the trees, understanding how training can change individuals and organizations, and how our training offerings fit into a larger movement ecosystem;
• You love tinkering with agendas until they are *just* right–and also have the confidence to adapt your plans in real-time based on the room; 
• You’re tuned into a range of “ways of knowing” and find ways to integrate theater, art, songs, meditation, play, and somatic practices in your teaching;
• You have strong social-emotional skills for managing up and managing laterally, collaborating with peers, and working with all levels of external partners;
• You’re emphatically values-centered, including a demonstrated commitment to racial, gender, and sexual-orientation equity. See MLL’s full statement of values for a sense of where we are seeking alignment.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

• Leadership & strategy: 
• Work closely with the Director of Training and Praxis as a day-to-day thought partner to support the overall health, function and impact of the training team.  
• Maintain a strategic understanding of, and relationships within, the national movement & community organizing landscape in order to align MLL’s capacity-building and training programs to movement needs.  
• Work closely with the Training Program Manager to implement and manage training programs and to steward relationships with consultants, vendors, and guest trainers.
• Represent MLL’s training work at movement gatherings, legal conferences, law schools, and in client and partner meetings, as requested. 
• Support resource organizing efforts, including collaborating on annual training revenue generation strategies and supporting the writing of training related grant proposals. 
• Training delivery & program oversight: 
• With the Director of Training & Praxis and sometimes on your own, lead online and in-person trainings, including single-session trainings, multi-year cohorts, and custom-tailored long-term organizational training programs.
• Starting from a strong experience-based knowledge of movement lawyering or community organizing, present MLL’s existing curriculum on topics such as: introduction to movement lawyering theory; lawyering to support transformative organizing; how to move from isolated tactics to long-arc strategy; the principles and practices of effective partnerships; and solutions to common movement-lawyering challenges. 
• Work closely with the Training Program Manager to field inquiries for training requests; draft sophisticated and tailored training proposals. 
• Rigorously evaluate and track the impact of our training work; synthesize and disseminate insights and lessons through internal memos and external reports.  
• Work closely with MLL’s communications and operations teams to market and promote training offerings.  
• Curriculum design: 
• Work closely with the Director of Training and Praxis to design new learning modules, facilitation agendas, and visual teaching tools; ensure training content syncs with course objectives; improve and adapt existing training curricula, including for asynchronous courses.
• Develop new and fresh curriculums tailored for organizations and individuals, including senior and junior lawyers, law students, and community organizers.
• Curate and launch an online library of existing training resources, ensuring accessibility and relevance; 
• Conceive of, co-design, and author, or project-manage the authoring of, new resources for mass dissemination including, for example, manuals, case studies, articles, and reports. 
• Steward the development of digital and graphic offerings (website and social media videos, infographics, animations, graphic recordings) to popularize movement lawyering to a broader audience. 
• Collaborate with legal subject-matter experts and law-and-organizing training shops to ensure curriculum content reflects best practices, emerging trends, as well as the needs of social movements.
• Scale MLL’s training capacity: 
• Grow and nurture a network of movement-lawyering trainers, fostering collaboration and knowledge-sharing, and providing mentorship and professional development opportunities to those in the network.
• Cultivate partnerships with academic institutions, bar associations, and other training institutes to promote our training offerings; and recruit new trainers
• Match trainers to training opportunities and evaluate trainers’ performance and impact. 

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Education: Juris Doctorate or 7-10+ years experience as a community organizer;
• Experience: 5+ years experience teaching and facilitating on topics related to the intersection of law and organizing; as well as 5+ years of active experience within social-justice organizing groups;
• Adept at designing transformative learning experiences both online and in-person, with a keen ability to develop engaging agendas and visual teaching tools;
• Competence in agitational facilitation with confidence navigating political discussions and pushing groups to action;
• Strong leadership skills with the ability to build and manage a network of experienced external trainers;
• Computer Skills: a high degree of comfort with online and computer-based software including learning-management systems (such as BeaconLive or Thinkific); digital communication tools (email; Slack; other messaging platforms); project-management tools (such as monday.com); mass-email and customer-relationship management tools (such as Action Network); document creation and presentation tools (Google Workspace; Microsoft Office; Adobe Acrobat); database and data-connection tools (Airtable; Zapier).
• Physical abilities: 
• Ability to work 8-hour days, 5 days a week, at a computer, with reasonable breaks.
• Occasional lifting of objects weighing up to 15 pounds from floor to waist height, during preparations and set-up of in-person events.
• 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. 
• Must be available 40 hours per week during regular business hours with occasional evening and weekend hours; regular working hours will depend, in part, on the rest of the Training team and other MLL staff and the time zones they operate in; some flexibility will be required.
• Travel: Must be available to travel by plane up to 10 times a year, up to 5 days per trip, for overnight events and meetings, anywhere in the continental U.S.
• COVID-19 vaccination: All staff are required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 with at least one booster shot. Requests for exemptions from the vaccination requirement will be considered on an individual basis, to the extent required by law.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Prior experience directly teaching and training lawyers.
• Experience in start-ups with an experimental or lab approach, rapid response campaign or political work, or consultancy firms working with social-movement groups.  
• Depthful, long-term relationships of trust with social-movement actors from one or more movements.  
• Knowledge of organizational change theory and ability to coach and support organizational clients, including coaching executive leaders.
• Strong cultural presence or experience as a cultural worker, for example with skills as a musician, song-bearer, or meditation leader.  
• Extensive “bag of tricks” to foster group connection and cohesion such as ice breakers, theater of the oppressed activities, and somatic practices.  

WHAT ELSE YOU WILL GET

• 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.

Movement Law Lab is fiscally sponsored by NEO Philanthropy, Inc. Through NEO, this position comes with a full benefits package, including 100% medical coverage for the employee and 90% medical coverage for dependents; 100% coverage for vision, dental, life insurance; long-term disability; a 401k retirement savings plan with employer matching after the first year; medical FSA; commuter benefits; Employee Assistance Program; generous paid time off; and other benefits.

HOW TO APPLY

MLL and NEO Philanthropy are an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, and people with past involvement in the criminal-legal system are strongly encouraged to apply. 

Applications must be submitted using a form linked to on our website (click “Apply Now”, below). To apply you must upload the following electronic files:

a.) A single PDF containing a cover letter addressed to Movement Law Lab; your résumé; and contact information for at least two professional references, including their phone numbers and email addresses.

b.) Two work samples: 

• 3-10 pages of a written facilitation agenda you were primarily responsible for creating in a training context; and
• 2-5 images of visual teaching tools you developed in the past such as a slide deck, toolkit, in-person handouts, or chart paper visuals. These can be uploaded as image files (.jpg, .png, etc.), slides (.pptx or a link to a Google Slides file), or a PDF document.
• If you developed these two work samples as part of a team, please explain your specific role in creating the materials.

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 before Friday, July 19, 2024 at 5:00 PM, U.S. Eastern time.