Staff Attorney, Family Defense Practice (Bronx)

Job Description

The Center for Family Representation Inc. (CFR) is an award-winning, innovative law and policy organization that serves primarily Black and Brown families and youth in Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx with an interdisciplinary legal defense model that serves more than 2400 clients every year. CFR was originally founded in 2002 to dramatically change the trajectory of indigent parents being prosecuted by the City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). Our goal is to defend and protect our clients’ rights, reduce the harm of family separation and prevent or minimize the time any child spends in the foster system. CFR provides interdisciplinary family defense with a model that was unique at our founding and that is now being replicated nationally: we assign every client an attorney and a social work staff member, and teams have the support of parent advocates, who are parents with direct personal experience of being investigated and prosecuted by ACS. CFR was the first agency in the country to integrate parents with lived experience into legal teams and now has 6 parent advocates working in all three of our family defense locations. CFR’s Community Advocacy Project represents parents during a child protective investigation (to avoid court involvement where possible) and assists parents in clearing their names from state maltreatment records.

As an agency committed to securing justice for families, we built the Youth Defense practice (YDP) to defend youth at risk of family separation through incarceration. YDP uses the same interdisciplinary model to represent youth being prosecuted in Queens and Manhattan in Supreme Court Youth Parts, during Probation Adjustment and in Delinquency proceedings in Family Court. CFR’s Home for Good program provides legal and social work services to clients in immigration, civil legal services and criminal defense matters, to afford clients an efficient and well-coordinated one-stop solution to a range of issues that threaten family stability. 

Recognized as experts in our fields, we annually train over 500 practitioners in the city, state and around the country on strategies to promote family preservation and interdisciplinary representation, and we provide community based “Know Your Rights” presentations to parents, youth and service providers. We advocate at the city, state and national level for policies that reduce the harm of family separation, and promote parent engagement and justice for youth and families.

Primary responsibilities:

• Work as part of CFR’s interdisciplinary legal teams (comprised of attorneys, social work staff, paralegals and parent advocates) to provide our clients with high quality legal defense  and meet objectives such as keeping children out of foster care, shortening lengths of stay for children in foster care, promoting quality visiting arrangements, and insuring that families receive services that are well-tailored to expediting safe and lasting reunification

• Represent parents in Family Court who are respondents in Article 10 and all related supplemental proceedings, including Termination of Parental Rights proceedings

• Pursue interim appeals on behalf of CFR’s clients

• Keep case data, client legal notes and files up to date

• Participate in CFR’s policy initiatives

• Actively engage in CFR’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives

• Work collaboratively with CFR's Home for Good teams

• Where appropriate, supervise law school interns

Throughout the pandemic our policy has been that all staff need to be in person when client or role responsibilities require that. Our current policy is: all employees whose work is primarily working with clients will be able to work from home up to three days per week and will work in the office at least two days per week.

Attorneys joining CFR can expect intensive, interdisciplinary training on CFR’s Cornerstone Advocacy model, family court, the child welfare/family regulation system, client interviewing, and other critical skills. CFR is dedicated to providing ongoing professional development in best practices in all these areas in a variety of training forums for all staff.

Qualifications

• Admitted to practice law in the State of New York.

• At least 2 years of prior experience with family law, public benefits, housing, criminal defense or immigration is preferred.

• Fluency in Spanish or other languages is desirable.

• Individuals who apply should be able to demonstrate strong interpersonal and communication skills, a commitment to interdisciplinary representation of parents and a desire to share in both the exhilaration and challenges of a growing endeavor.