Counsel III - Western Region

Commonwealth of Massachusetts • Springfield, MA

5d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Massachusetts Department of Revenue’s Child Support Services Division seeks an attorney for a Counsel III position assigned to the Western Regional Office located in Springfield. DOR/CSS utilizes a hybrid work model where employees work both in-office and remotely, depending on operational needs. Candidates must ensure they have the appropriate work environment for telework, including but not limited to, connectivity, and resource access to conduct their job duties while remote. Candidates must be able to supervise and be supervised remotely and must be able to work effectively in an isolated setting. Candidates must be organized, highly disciplined, conscientious, motivated, and committed to utilizing identified tools for successfully performing in a remote setting. Candidates will be required to travel to offices on an as-needed basis to meet with other child support staff, customers, or other stakeholders. Candidates must be available to travel to their officially designated work location with as little notice as the same workday should an exigent circumstance arise.
The Counsel III incumbent will serve as the Regional Counsel in CSS’s Western Regional office. The Counsel III will oversee legal operations within assigned work units and provide child support services for approximately 30,000 families. The Counsel III will collaborate with the Probate and Family Court to establish parentage, and establish, enforce, and modify child support and health insurance orders.
DOR/CSS utilizes Business Process Management principles to set standards for work, establish program and unit performance metrics, and establish uniform standards for service delivery to customers. The Counsel III is expected to align the work of the legal teams with the larger goals of the child support program. The Counsel III is expected to engage with staff, management, and public stakeholders in a collaborative manner to enhance respect for, and confidence in, the DOR/CSS program and in the Commonwealth as a whole.

Requirements

• Juris Doctor (JD) degree
• Admission to the Massachusetts Bar Association
• At least six years of full-time, or equivalent part time, professional experience in the practice of law in a specialized area that is relevant to the assigned agency.
• Three years in a supervisory capacity may be required.
• Candidates must ensure they have the appropriate work environment for telework, including but not limited to, connectivity, and resource access to conduct their job duties while remote.
• Candidates must be able to supervise and be supervised remotely and must be able to work effectively in an isolated setting.
• Candidates must be organized, highly disciplined, conscientious, motivated, and committed to utilizing identified tools for successfully performing in a remote setting.
• Candidates will be required to travel to offices on an as-needed basis to meet with other child support staff, customers, or other stakeholders.
• Candidates must be available to travel to their officially designated work location with as little notice as the same workday should an exigent circumstance arise.

Nice To Haves

• Leadership - Ability to lead employees in a results-driven environment, setting the pace through your expectations and example, in order to meet the organization’s goals for productivity, quality, standardization, and service; exercise this leadership through effective planning, organizing, delegation, cooperation, follow-through, good judgment and decision-making.
• Strategic Thinking - Ability to establish strategic goals and link these goals to the agency vision by integrating financial, business, service, operations and personnel development objectives for maximum performance, reviewing policies and practices for efficiency, identifying and resolving problems, developing and implementing innovative methods to advance goals and evaluating outcomes.
• Coaching - Ability to coach and mentor others by setting clear expectations, helping staff grow in knowledge and skill, fairly administering policy, implementing employee readiness strategies to manage change, encouraging individual accountability and inspiring employees to succeed through regular performance evaluation, professional development, positive recognition, motivation and/or constructive feedback.
• Teamwork - Ability to foster a spirit of teamwork and unity within the department that empowers employees, allowing for candid discussions of different ideas, embracing diversity, engaging in healthy conflict resolution strategies, finding common ground and creating a cohesive environment that encourages openness, trust and challenge.
• Interpersonal Skills - Ability to build effective and responsive interpersonal relationships with staff members, colleagues and managers by demonstrating integrity, collaboration, respect and promoting a positive culture of continuous improvement.
• Communication Skills - Exceptional oral and written communication skills, including directing staff in a manner that enhances productivity and manifests excellence, effective listening techniques, strong negotiation/mediation ability and the capacity to build bridges with others to achieve shared goals.
• Flexibility - Ability to demonstrate flexibility and adapt one’s priorities or approaches and those of staff to meet competing demands, organizational changes, modified operational requirements or emergency situations.
• Customer Service Orientation - Strong focus on customer service, including the ability to see the Child Support Enforcement Program from the customer’s perspective, understand his/her needs, forecast how certain business decisions impact the customer and develop creative solutions to best balance operational needs and customer satisfaction, ensuring the customer’s needs are met timely.

Responsibilities

• Oversee the delivery of child support legal services to ensure the agency’s position is well represented at virtual and/or in-person case conferences, divisional hearings, administrative hearings, and trials.
• Integrate the diverse work of various units within the agency and in the probate and family courts for effective workflow and enhanced program performance.
• Serve as a subject matter expert having advanced and specialized expertise in the laws, legal principles and practices in the areas of parentage establishment, child support and medical support order establishment, and the modification and enforcement of these court orders.
• Provide legal advice and functional direction and counsel to other CSS staff and managers.
• Supervise attorney staff by prioritizing, assigning and reviewing work, providing training, instruction and guidance and evaluating performance with the intent of accomplishing objectives and developing the professional skills of the team.
• Support agency objectives for standardization of business processes to drive work activities within and between teams and regions; work collaboratively with CSS management on both legal and operational processes to increase throughput, maximize efficiency of legal case processing, meet agency goals including the expedited processing standard, and provide quality and timely service to customers.
• Take proactive steps to identify workflow and process efficiencies by compiling and analyzing data, by using system-generated reports, and by developing strategies based on the analysis to forecast and measure customer cooperation and compliance and manage case inventories.
• Implement data-driven projects and evaluate outcomes based on defined metrics to identify case processing trends, assess effectiveness of business process workflow, and recommend new or modified workflows to address problem areas and to measure individual productivity and unit performance.
• Participate in statewide meetings and workgroups to collaborate and identify workflow and process improvements to further the goal of uniform litigation practices, to exchange program and policy information and implement new initiatives to improve program effectiveness.
• This includes participating in workgroups, reviewing data and cross-functional workflows, and making process improvement recommendations to management on statewide initiatives such as cross regional case sharing and the case conferencing model.
• Maintain relationships with others including agency counsel, management, and staff; customers; outside counsel and bar associations; contractors and vendors; judges and court staff; the Legislature and other state agencies; federal offices; and members of advocacy groups, community organizations and the general public.
• Serve as liaison to various legal authorities to foster productive working relationships and effectively litigate child support cases.
• Support agency efforts to promote safe child support service delivery by communicating with customers, staff and external service providers regarding agency policies, procedures and services to ensure customer safety issues are managed appropriately.

Benefits

• Comprehensive Benefits
• An outstanding suite of employee benefits that add to the overall value of your compensation package.
• A work experience that supports you, your loved ones, and your future.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree