What are the responsibilities and job description for the Post Doctoral Fellow position at unm?
The University of New Mexico School of Law Border Justice Initiative is seeking to hire a full-time Post-Doctoral Fellow for a 1-year term. This appointment will begin in September 2024 with an attached salary of $70,000.00. The Fellowship provides an opportunity for new lawyers to improve the immigration status of women and children at the border.
This Border Justice Fellowship will be awarded to a third-year law student or immediate graduate at the University of New Mexico School of Law (UNMSOL) with a demonstrated commitment to immigration, social justice, racial equity, children, and families. The Fellow will also have demonstrated a longstanding interest in the immigrant community, including lived experience and been actively engaged in the Border Justice Initiative at the law school.
The Fellow will partner with a non-profit host organization dedicated to serving the needs of low-income immigrants. The host organization will agree to provide office space, legal malpractice insurance, a computer, internet access, phone, etc., necessary to work as an attorney. It will also provide supervision by an experienced immigration attorney who will work in collaboration with designated faculty at the University of New Mexico School of Law.
The Focus of the Fellowship: Legal Advocacy
The work of the Fellow will focus on providing and improving legal representation of immigrants, particularly women, children, and families at the border and elsewhere. This individual legal representation may be conducted in state or federal courts and with governmental entities. Legal advocacy includes direct legal representation of individual clients, class action and impact litigation, brief service/advice, administrative representation, transactional work, and provision of legal education and training.
Terms and Requirements of the Fellowship:
Ongoing Support: The Fellow will receive on-going training, mentoring, and networking opportunities during their first year. The host organization will host mandatory, supportive monthly meetings designed to develop camaraderie among colleagues, to encourage partnerships between related projects, and to provide a supportive environment for discussing successes and challenges arising in their projects.
Reporting: Fellows will be required to report orally on their projects during the monthly meetings, as well as to provide brief, written quarterly reports to the University of New Mexico and the Foundation (which will soon be rebranded but is currently known as the JML Foundation) on the status of their projects. At the end of the first year of the fellowship, an annual report will be required. A full report must be submitted at the end of the second year describing the project’s activities and impact. The exact contents of each report will be determined by the Fellow and the host organization in consultation with the LBJI. Contents of these report will be determined in part by the methods described in the fellowship application for assessing progress.
The reporting requirements are intended as learning opportunities. They should help the Fellow and the host organization identify successes as well as challenges and possible solutions. The goal of the reporting is to identify ways to continue improving the quality of services provided in current and future projects.
Salary : $70,000