About the Legal Aid Justice Center:

The Legal Aid Justice Center is a nationally recognized, non-profit organization that partners with communities and clients to fight for racial, social, and economic justice. We understand that the harms our clients endure are inextricably linked to overarching systems of injustice. Together we are dismantling those systems through a combination of community organizing, litigation, policy advocacy, public relations, and individual legal services.

Very recently, we helped lead the fight to reform Virginia’s unemployment insurance system including advocacy that resulted in the distribution of over $1 billion in illegally withheld payments to over 160,000 Virginians. During the pandemic, we helped hundreds of families avoid eviction through a combination of legal representation and help accessing rent relief funds. Our staff are on the front lines of some of the most important anti-poverty fights happening today.

Founded in 1967, LAJC has offices in Charlottesville, Richmond, Petersburg, and Falls Church and provides services under six key program areas: Civil Rights & Racial Justice, Economic Justice, Youth Justice, Health Justice, Immigrant Justice, and Worker Justice. For more information, visit www.justice4all.org.

LAJC’s latest strategic plan is available at https://www.justice4all.org/lajc-strategic-plan-2022-2026/#area d.

About the Immigration Justice Program:

LAJC has a long history of serving immigrant communities across Virginia, including individuals without documentation and facing deportation. LAJC’s Immigrant Justice Program works to end mass detention and deportation of immigrants in Virginia, and to break the ties between immigration enforcement and local and state government and law enforcement. We work to ensure that immigrant communities remain intact and protected in Virginia, fight the separation of immigrant families and the exclusion of immigrants from state benefits, and protect young immigrants across the Commonwealth whether in federal custody or in their communities. Previously, the team also supported farmworker campaigns, but in 2022 as the result of its significant growth, LAJC launched a new Worker Justice Program to house the farmworker campaigns, in addition to other worker justice efforts.

LAJC’s recent wins include a coordinated effort to drastically reduce the population of a local immigration detention center down to historically low levels through impact litigation, partnership with long-time organizing efforts and litigating individual habeas corpus petitions; increasing the eligible age for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status children; ending mandatory ICE notifications for misdemeanor arrests; and establishing in-state tuition and state-funded financial aid for undocumented students with pending asylum applications who graduate from Virginia high schools. In addition to individual legal defense of immigrants facing removal proceedings and federal litigation on behalf of detained immigrants, our attorneys and organizers partner with local community members and community groups as well as national advocacy organizations to promote systemic reforms reducing the abuse and exploitation of immigrants, and to advocate for policies that promote integration and protection of immigrant communities.

About the Position:

The Legal Aid Justice Center seeks to hire a Senior Supervising Immigration Attorney for our Richmond office. The attorney will at first supervise 1, and eventually up to 3-4, attorneys or case-handling paralegals. The attorney may also assist in directing the immigration clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law, with six to eight students and a docket consisting primarily of removal defenses cases. The attorney will also maintain their own docket of individual cases, primarily removal defense, as well as take a leadership role in various impact campaigns (including individual and class action litigation, state and local advocacy, and grassroots community lawyering) affecting immigrant communities in and around Richmond and statewide. 

Job Duties:

• Supervise at first one, but eventually up to 3-4 attorneys or case handling paralegals.
• Direct the immigration clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law. 
• Maintain a docket of individual cases, primarily removal defense.
• Take a leadership role in various impact campaigns (including federal litigation, state and local advocacy, and grassroot community lawyering) affecting immigrant communities in and around Richmond and statewide. 
• Racial equity: Promote racial equity across all dimensions, including within LAJC, by doing the following:
  • Helping to recruit, retain, and support both staff and leadership that reflect the racial composition of our community.
  • Cultivating respect for the work of and expanding resources for non-attorney staff that are disproportionately people of color.
  • Creating spaces for staff to discuss issues of racial, gender, and all other issues of marginalization.
  • Pushing for institutional and cultural changes by management, the board, and staff to further promote racial equity.