Family Law Attorney

Open Door Legal • San Francisco, CA

16d • $83,500 - $105,500 • Hybrid

About The Position

As the Family Law Staff Attorney, you will provide critical support to our Family Law Team (currently one managing attorney, two staff attorneys, and one paralegal) by ensuring all of our family law clients receive excellent legal services. Our family practice team helps to heal families and communities, reduce conflict, and set our clients (and their children) up for future success. Our unique and innovative model of practice involves advising and representing clients in all areas of family law, including child custody and visitation, child support and parentage, divorce, Domestic Violence Restraining Orders, guardianship, and adoption. Our clients are incredibly brave and resilient, and we seek to support them when they face an intense or contentious case in court. The work is fast-paced and will require you to be organized, think critically and dynamically, and demonstrate empathy and awareness in understanding the needs of our community. Overall, this position is intended to be a challenging yet extremely rewarding experience for someone looking to make a difference in clients’ lives and willing to commit at least two years to an innovative, results-oriented, and fast-growing organization.

Requirements

• Membership in good standing with the California State Bar. Applicants without active California bar membership will not be considered. However, those without a license are encouraged to apply to volunteer with us at opendoorlegal.org/volunteer.
• Strong time management skills and the ability to handle quick timelines, manage diverse activities, organize case tasks, manage diverse activities, and meet critical deadlines with minimal supervision.
• Active demonstration of cultural humility and sensitivity to barriers low-income San Franciscans face when attempting to access the justice system.
• Demonstrated understanding of how to effectively provide trauma-informed advocacy for clients in crisis, including those experiencing domestic violence.
• Hybrid position: minimum of three days in-office in one or more of our Open Door Legal office locations.
• High level of comfort learning and using technology and cloud-based case management systems. We use Salesforce, Dropbox, and Google Suite.
• Willingness to make a minimum two-year commitment to the organization.
• Must be legally authorized to work in the U.S without sponsorship.

Nice To Haves

• Comfort translating and interpreting from English to Spanish and vice versa legal information without assistance.
• Previous experience working with family law issues (custody and visitation, dissolution, domestic violence).
• Previous supervisory experience, including supervising interns or volunteers.
• Experience with filing and interacting within the San Francisco Superior Court.
• Experience working with low-income and vulnerable populations.
• Experience working in a high-volume direct services legal aid or similar environment.
• Having lived a significant period of your life in San Francisco proper.

Responsibilities

• Embrace and embody our mission of universal access to civil legal aid and ensure that everyone in our service area with a viable family law issue gets appropriate help, including legal advice and representation.
• Maintain a full caseload (as per team needs) while opening and closing cases in an efficient manner.
• Facilitate and lead Family Law intakes across multiple physical Open Door Legal office locations.
• Work with clients to assist with discovery requests and information gathering.
• Appear in San Francisco Superior Court to represent litigants in Family Law Cases, as needed.
• Provide clients with case management, including maintaining and providing necessary verbal and written follow-ups with clients.
• Review documents with clients and obtain their informed signatures.
• Oversee timely filings (including drafting and compiling forms to file in court, such as fee waivers, proofs of service, and other standard filings) and mailings, ensuring they are high-quality and within deadline.
• Communicate with court clerks and private vendors about scheduling or filing issues.
• Oversee service of process (personal, substitute, and mail).
• Understand the civil procedure behind service.
• Use creative methods to locate and serve evasive defendants.
• Coordinate with the sheriffs or private process servers to ensure personal service is completed by deadline.
• Provide services and support to our low-income clients with humility and awareness of cultural, socio-economic, and ability differences.
• Efficiently utilize Salesforce, our client management system (CMS), to document case activities, maintain accurate client records, and ensure timely record updates.
• Commit to leading the office in representing our mission and values externally to potential clients, clients, and others as well as internally to all teammates and volunteers. Our values are passion, grit, teamwork, caring, and dynamism.

Benefits

• Loan Repayment Assistance - for staff pursuing 10-year public interest debt forgiveness, we will pay the minimum payment on all qualifying loans so that you don’t need to worry about student loan debt (this is a conditional benefit).
• Medical/Dental/Vision Plan offerings at 100% coverage
• Generous paid time off (four weeks vacation and two weeks sick/care)
• Flexible work hours
• Generous paid parental leave
• 401K/Retirement Account
• We believe everyone is always learning. We financially invest in individual professional development for each staff member and provide many internal and external mentorships, coaching, and learning opportunities (conferences, workshops, etc.).

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed