Innovation Associate

Legal Services Corporation•Washington, DC

8d•$93,250 - $97,017•Hybrid

About The Position

The Innovation & Learning Associate helps LSC develop, test, evaluate, and share new approaches to delivering civil legal services and expanding access to justice. Working at the intersection of legal services, technology, data, research, learning, and program improvement, the Associate connects legal aid organizations, LSC subject-matter experts, project leads, and technology partners—translating practical problems into approaches that can be researched, tested, improved, and shared. The Associate works with LSC staff, legal services organizations, and stakeholders to understand current workflows, identify where technology or process redesign may help, research available approaches, and translate promising ideas into problem statements, use cases, pilot plans, requirements, and measures of success. The Associate coordinates participants and vendors, supports pilots and user testing, analyzes evidence, and turns findings into improved practices, learning activities, field resources, and proposals for future work. The Associate independently advances assigned work within priorities and substantive direction established by project leads. The Associate may serve as the routine point of contact for grantees, vendors, consultants, and internal partners; prepare strong first drafts and recommend practical approaches; keep work moving; and identify questions requiring senior decisions. The Associate does not set project strategy or technical architecture and is not expected to code solutions. The role does require curiosity and practical technical fluency: the ability to learn and test unfamiliar tools, work with structured information and data, and stay informed about advances in AI and other technologies that may affect civil legal aid and access to justice.

Requirements

Demonstrated ability to move from an ambiguous problem to a structured inquiry, testable approach, and useful work product.
Strong curiosity about how legal services are delivered and how technology, process redesign, data, training, and organizational change can improve that work.
Practical, user-centered judgment: able to distinguish an interesting technology from a worthwhile solution and to incorporate feedback without losing sight of the underlying problem.
Comfort experimenting, learning from imperfect results, and documenting both what worked and what did not.
Excellent project management, coordination, organization, and follow-through, with the judgment to communicate independently with vendors, grantees, consultants, and internal partners within established direction.
Excellent written and oral communication skills, including the ability to prepare clear, concise briefs, requirements, resources, presentations, recommendations, and correspondence for varied audiences.
Ability to work effectively across offices and disciplines, build productive working relationships without direct authority, and recognize when an issue requires escalation or a senior decision.
Ability to manage multiple assignments within an agreed workplan, make sound day-to-day decisions, and adapt as projects develop.
Experience with applied research, user research, evaluation, service design, or continuous improvement, including qualitative methods and basic quantitative analysis.
Ability to synthesize information from multiple sources, identify patterns, translate evidence into practical recommendations, and communicate limitations accurately.
Ability to design and support learning activities and create resources that help varied audiences adopt and apply new tools and practices.
Ability to learn unfamiliar tools, test workflows systematically, document findings, and explain issues to technical and nontechnical audiences.
Comfort working with spreadsheets, structured information, and data and engaging credibly with vendor implementation teams and technical staff.
Sound judgment about privacy, security, human review, responsible AI, and other considerations that affect the safe use of technology in legal services.
Bachelor’s degree and approximately five years of relevant experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
Demonstrated ability to learn and test unfamiliar tools
Demonstrated ability to work with structured information or data
Demonstrated ability to understand how technology affects users and workflows
Demonstrated ability to communicate credibly with technical and nontechnical partners
Familiarity with generative AI, automation, data, or other emerging technologies and their responsible user demonstrated ability to develop that knowledge rapidly.
Strong proficiency with Microsoft Office and collaboration tools.

Nice To Haves

A relevant graduate degree may substitute for up to two years of experience.
Relevant experience may include: Legal innovation or legal operations, Service design or user research, Technology adoption or implementation, Product, project, or program management in a technology-enabled setting, Data analysis or visualization, Applied research or evaluation, Process improvement, Technical assistance, Nonprofit or public-sector innovation, Another background combining inquiry, technology, and execution.
Experience in civil legal aid, access to justice, or legal-services technology is preferred but not required.
Experience with the following is helpful: Learning-management systems, Project-management platforms, Business intelligence tools, Data analytics and visualization tools, No-code or low-code tools

Responsibilities

Works with legal aid organizations, LSC staff, and other partners to understand service-delivery challenges, user needs, existing workflows, technology constraints, and opportunities for improvement.
Conducts environmental scans, literature and market research, and reviews of prior LSC grants and evaluations to identify promising practices, unmet needs, and transferable lessons.
Maps workflows and translates needs into clear problem statements, user stories, use cases, requirements, learning questions, and practical measures of success.
Contributes research and first drafts for concept notes, pilot designs, scopes, presentations, proposals, and related materials; researches potential partners, tools, and comparable initiatives.
Supports technology and service-delivery pilots from planning through testing and closeout by maintaining workplans, schedules, participant communications, materials, and follow-up.
Coordinates routinely with vendors and implementation partners within an approved scope; communicates user needs and project feedback, prepares meetings and materials, tracks deliverables and open questions, and routes contractual, technical, or strategic issues to the responsible lead.
Helps shape and test content, learning materials, prototypes, data products, and other tools; documents usability concerns, improvement opportunities, and supports iterative revision.
Plans and conducts user research, demonstrations, feedback sessions, and structured testing with legal aid staff and other intended users; synthesizes findings into concrete recommendations for the next iteration.
Supports participant recruitment, onboarding, training, peer-learning activities, office hours, and technical-assistance follow-up for pilots and innovation initiatives.
Develops or curates practical adoption resources, such as prompt libraries, examples, FAQs, and implementation guidance, that help staff and learning communities use new tools safely and effectively.
Supports rapid-cycle evaluation through baseline and follow-up surveys, interviews, focus groups, participation and adoption measures, and selected workflow benchmarks.
Collects, cleans, organizes, and analyzes qualitative and quantitative information; identifies patterns, implementation barriers, limitations, and practical implications.
Captures participant questions, examples, and implementation challenges and uses them to improve training, technical assistance, tools, and future pilots.
Turns project findings into clear, usable products, including playbooks, implementation guides, case examples, issue pages, FAQs, briefs, presentations, and other resources for the civil legal aid field.
Works with the Technology Initiative Grants (TIG) program and other LSC offices to identify useful lessons from grants, evaluations, technical-assistance projects, and grantee experience and make those lessons easier to find, understand, and apply.
Maintains clear workplans and organized project records across assigned initiatives; tracks time, deliverables, decisions, risks, and follow-up by project.
Documents recurring field needs, promising ideas, potential partners and funding opportunities, approaches tested, results, barriers, reusable resources, and questions for future work for review with supervisors and relevant project leads.
Manages multiple assignments within an agreed portfolio workplan, flags competing demands early, and seeks direction when priorities conflict.
Supports periodic portfolio reviews by documenting incoming requests, project results, funding sources, and reusable outputs.
Performs other duties as assigned.