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 (LAJC) is a nationally recognized anti-poverty nonprofit committed to battling poverty and injustice through individual legal representation, group and class action litigation, community organizing, policy advocacy, and media relations. From its offices in Charlottesville, Richmond, Petersburg and Falls Church, LAJC is a fierce advocate for low-income clients and communities in Central and Northern Virginia, and its work broadly impacts the entire state. LAJC’s Immigrant Justice Program supports low-income immigrants in their efforts to find justice and end mass detention and deportation of immigrants in Virginia, break the ties between immigration enforcement and local and state government and law enforcement, ensure that immigrant communities remain intact and protected in Virginia, fight the separation of immigrant families and the exclusion of immigrant youth from state benefits like in-state tuition, and protect young immigrants across the Commonwealth whether they are in federal custody or in their communities.

As soon as possible, LAJC seeks to hire a temporary immigration paralegal for our Richmond office. This role will provide administrative assistance and paralegal support to attorneys in the Immigrant Justice Program, an interdisciplinary team that advocates to advance systemic change in immigrants’ rights in Virginia through a combination of direct individual representation, impact litigation, community outreach, and policy advocacy.

This full-time, temporary position will be based in the Richmond office. This role combines administrative responsibilities (scheduling appointments, mailing and filing documents, file management, etc.) with providing support to LAJC’s lawyers, organizers and development staff (when appropriate preparing and collecting supporting documentation, case tracking, interpreting and translating documents, drafting general flyers or communications, helping with court filings, assisting with events). A large portion of the work for this position will be supporting direct representation of immigrants before the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Most of our clients are more comfortable speaking and writing in Spanish, so the person who fills this position must be fully bilingual and have experience providing both written and spoken translation and interpretation (Spanish/English).

Among other preferred qualifications, the ideal candidate will have a strong commitment to social, economic, and racial justice and have direct experience working with immigrant, low-income, and/or communities of color.

The position is based in LAJC’s Richmond, VA office. Limited travel to other LAJC offices (Charlottesville and Falls Church) may be required.

Job Duties:

• Assisting attorneys with defensive and affirmative direct representation of immigrants (before EOIR and USCIS)
• Communicating and meeting with clients to prepare cases
• Supporting program staff with administrative duties (mailing, court filings, scheduling, digital and paper file management, etc.)
• Translation and interpretation of documents and oral communications between Spanish and English