Street Democracy - Staff Attorney - Detroit

Position

Staff Attorney - Detroit, MI

As a staff attorney, you'll spend 80% of your time helping homeless folks resolve legal issues that affect their ability to be stability housed. You'll conduct a comprehensive legal screening ("check-up") and handle the traffic, civil, and misdemeanors; landlord-tenant issues; child support and divorce; and debt relief issues that you identify. The remaining 20% of the time you will work on a poverty-related legal reform project.

About street democracy

We're a small group of justice architects. We use our legal skills to transform the systems that perpetuate poverty into systems of opportunity. We're generalists with enough range to help our homeless clients navigate those problematic systems. We're creative tinkerers when developing better ways to achieve justice--even if the prototype is all jenky and held together by duct tape. :p But we're not too self-important that we can't laugh about the hubris of chasing after our dreams. Learn more at www.streetdemocracy.org.

Responsibilities

  • Give your clients white glove, holistic legal services
  • Be responsive to their case managers at partner organizations
  • Craft and self-direct your legal reform project
  • Pitch in whenever and wherever you needed

Qualifications

  • Have a JD, be able to practice law in Michigan
  • Have 1+ years of legal aid or pro bono experience (clinic counts)
  • Be able to teach yourself (and then us & clients) new areas of law
  • Be able to work multiple types of cases, a jack of all trades


Salary
Pay and benefits are in line with legal services salaries and commensurate with experience. We know we're not able to pay you what you'd get in the for-profit world, but we promise that you'll always be treated with respect, have flexibility to shape work around your homelife and other obligations, and, most importantly, have the freedom to do justice.

Non-discrimination policy
We strongly encourage people of color, women, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, people with past involvement in the justice system, and people with experience with poverty. This is more than a generic policy statement, as 83% of the board and staff have multiple such identities and all of us have at least one.

To apply

Apply at jobs.streetdemocracy.org. You'll just need a resume/cv, a writing sample, and a paragraph about what change you would want to help make happen.

Date Posted