Managing Family Law Attorney

Full time, Exempt

Hybrid (3 days/week in office minimum)

About Us

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” - Nelson Mandela

We believe that even the biggest problems can be broken down into small, achievable steps. Poverty and access to justice are part of the same problem. And we’re solving this problem together. At Open Door Legal (ODL), we’re pioneering the country’s first system of universal access to civil legal representation to dramatically reduce poverty and prove that the law really can belong to all of us. We’ve grown 150x in 10 years, and in the next 2 years, we hope to finish scaling across San Francisco. To achieve this goal, we’ve created an award-winning and best-in-class legal aid organization full of passionate, motivated, gritty, thoughtful, and team-oriented people. We believe that injustice is the heart of poverty, and we're looking for someone to join us in ensuring justice for all.

Overview of Position

ODL is hiring a Managing Family Law Attorney to lead our Family Law practice, guiding a team of four attorneys and one paralegal in helping resolve family conflicts, protect victims, and ensure that courts make decisions in the best interests of children. Our unique and innovative model of practice involves representing both men and women in all areas of family law, including child custody and visitation, child support and paternity, divorce, Domestic Violence Restraining Orders, guardianship, and adoption. ODL offers legal advice and representation in all areas of family law, as we do not limit our assistance to matters involving domestic violence.

This role combines hands-on legal practice with strategic team leadership. The Managing Family Law Attorney will carry their own caseload, working closely with clients, while also supervising and mentoring the attorneys and paralegal on the team. This means setting the vision and strategy for the practice area, ensuring consistent quality and sound judgment across every case, developing the legal skills and confidence of team members, and making thoughtful decisions about how to allocate the team's time and resources so that every low-income family who comes to us receives excellent representation.

We're looking for a leader who can balance the needs of individual clients with the long-term health and impact of the practice, who leads by example and who creates a supportive, high-standards environment where attorneys and staff can do their best work. Our work is transformative because it literally changes lives. The Family Law practice helps to heal families and communities, reduce conflict, and set our clients and their children up for success. Our clients are incredibly brave and resilient, and this role exists to make sure they have a strong, steady team behind them when they face an intense or contentious case in court. Overall, this position is intended to be a challenging and rewarding experience for someone looking to grow in their substantive and strategic leadership and help us dramatically reduce poverty. Success in this role requires grit, dynamism, teamwork, care, and passion (also our team’s five values). You will report directly to the Associate Director of Legal Operations and directly supervise each member of the Family Law Team.

Responsibilities

• Embody our mission of universal access to civil legal aid and use leadership to ensure that legal representation is provided to all guests in ODL’s service area with a viable family law case, either by ourselves or others.
• Directly represent family law clients. Conduct/facilitate intakes in-person and virtually across multiple physical ODL locations.
• Balance individual casework with your increasing management and leadership responsibilities.
• Ensure you have mastery in legal advocacy and the relevant practice areas to mentor your team and oversee the legal advice and representation provided by your team to our guests and clients. 
• Hire, train, support, mentor, and manage all Family Law Team staff, interns, fellows, and volunteers in collaboration with the Director of Talent and Culture. This includes performance management, professional development, and building a cohesive team culture.

• Develop and maintain public relations with other legal service organizations and social service organizations serving family law needs and with private attorneys to help with good partnerships, referrals, and mentorship.
• Obtain and maintain knowledge needed to competently represent clients in SF Superior Court in matters relating to dissolution, custody and visitation, DVROs, child support, guardianship, and adoption and to advise clients in matters litigated in counties outside of San Francisco. 
• Use creative strategies and data to ensure that your team is working smarter, not harder, in order to increase the capacity of the department and reach the collective strategic vision for your department.
• Lead the knowledge management of all areas of civil law and civil procedure that your team handles. 
• Drive the creation of uniform systems, checklists, and templates to increase the capacity of all team members to deliver consistently high-quality work products with minimal supervision, and ensure you and your team are following best practices. 
• Along with team members, bring and develop innovative solutions to tricky issues around case capacity concerns, intake distribution, case opening standards, department success criteria, verification of quality control, and onboarding new attorneys. 
• Provide and ensure your team is providing services and support to our low-income clients with sensitivity and awareness to cultural, socio-economic, and disability barriers to service and can skillfully navigate difficult or tense situations. Ensure that the Family Law Team’s client feedback rating continues to be positive.  
• Embrace and embody our values of teamwork, grit, caring, passion, and dynamism. 

Requirements

Applicants who are members in good standing with the State Bar of California, or licensed in good standing with another state bar, may be considered. However, those without a license are encouraged to apply to volunteer with us at opendoorlegal.org/volunteer.

• At least six (6) years of relevant professional experience as a licensed attorney.
• At least two (2) years of family law experience; four (4) years is preferred.
• Experience directly supervising paid staff attorneys. Must be able to provide references from attorneys supervised.
• California civil law and superior court civil procedure knowledge.
• Must genuinely enjoy and be motivated by working with low-income clients, many of whom are people of color, and be able to work effectively with clients impacted by trauma (emotional, mental, and physical). 
• Strong time management skills to effectively supervise and perform legal work in a fast-paced environment and high-volume practice. 
• Show an enthusiasm for and commitment to self-learning and professional development.
• Excellent writing, editing, and proofreading skills, with the ability to be detail-oriented. 
• Excellent interpersonal and diplomacy skills to excel in providing constructive feedback to people you supervise and in building relationships with other organizations and agencies as ODL's ambassador.
• Must be able and willing to work out of one or more of our office locations at least three (3) days/week.
• High level of comfortability learning and using technology and case management systems. We use Salesforce, Dropbox, and the Google Suite.  
• Active demonstration of cultural humility and sensitivity to barriers low-income San Franciscans face when attempting to access the justice system.
• Demonstrated understanding of how to effectively provide trauma-informed advocacy for clients in crisis.
• Must be legally authorized to work in the U.S without sponsorship.

Bonus Points

• Comfort translating and interpreting from English to Spanish or Cantonese and vice versa legal information without assistance (this comes with a slight compensation increase).
• Experience with filing and interacting within the San Francisco Superior Court.
• Experience working with low-income and vulnerable populations.
• Experience working in a high-volume direct services legal aid or similar environment.
• Having lived a significant period of your life in San Francisco proper, specifically, a connection to the Bayview/Hunters Point, Excelsior, Sunset, Western Addition, Tenderloin, or Mission neighborhoods. 

Starting compensation is $89,500-$111,500 annually, based on experience.

Benefits:

• Loan Repayment Assistance - for staff pursuing 10-year public interest debt forgiveness, we will pay the minimum payment on all qualifying loans so that you don’t need to worry about student loan debt (this is a conditional benefit).
• Medical/Dental/Vision Plan offerings at 100% coverage
• Generous paid time off (four weeks vacation and two weeks sick/care)
• Flexible work hours
• Generous paid parental leave
• 401K/Retirement Account
• We believe everyone is always learning. We financially invest in individual professional development for each staff member which can include mentorships, coaching, and learning opportunities (conferences, workshops, etc.).
• We are a fun and hard-working office with best-in-class technology solutions for anyone who’s passionate about making a meaningful and measurable difference.