Description

About CFR

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) and our goal is to reduce the harm of family separation and prevent or minimize the time any child spends in foster care. CFR provides interdisciplinary family defense to parents charged by ACS 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 losing children to foster care and safely reunifying their families. CFR was the first agency in the country to integrate parents with lived experience into legal teams. In 2015, CFR expanded its practice to provide legal and social work services to parents in immigration, civil legal services and criminal defense matters.

In addition, CFR’s Youth Defense Practice represents youth in Queens and Manhattan in Supreme Court Youth Parts, during Probation Adjustment and in Delinquency proceedings in Family Court. CFR’s Community Advocacy Project represents parents during a child protective investigation (prior to court involvement) and assists parents in clearing their names from state maltreatment records. 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 promote parent engagement and justice for youth and families.

In the Summer 2022 CFR opened an office in the Bronx and became a conflict provider for family defense respondents in the Bronx.

About the Internship

The intern will work collaboratively with CFR attorneys and social work staff working in our immigration practice. A third of the clients CFR represents are immigrants and to defend them and their families, our Immigration team offers them specialized attorney, social work and paralegal assistance. When the City charges non-citizen parents with neglect, whether they are undocumented or have a “green card,” the charge can put their immigration status in jeopardy and can create a risk that they will be detected by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), separated from their children, taken into custody, held in detention, and even deported. That risk is even greater if they also have a criminal case. The immigration team helps parents apply for legal status, and if they are at risk of deportation, defend them.

The intern will participate in comprehensive training and receive individualized supervision and mentoring. The intern will get direct, hands-on experience with advocacy, client counseling, crisis intervention, negotiation and case management. The intern will pursue individual research and writing assignments, have the opportunity to work on projects related to the specific practice area to which they are assigned, appear on the record in court pursuant to student practice orders if appropriate, and more. 

Qualifications

Qualifications

CFR will consider law students with a demonstrated interest in our work.

Application Instructions
To apply, please send a cover letter, resume, writing sample and list of three references to Emily Wall (ewall@cfrny.org) by May 1st, 2024. Kindly put "Summer Legal Internship - Immigration." Applications will be considered on a rolling basis.