Overview
The Center for Family Representation, Inc., (CFR) is an award-winning, innovative law and policy organization that was founded in 2002 to dramatically change the trajectory of indigent families impacted by child welfare and to reduce the number of children entering foster care. CFR introduced a new model of legal services to parents charged with abuse or neglect: we assign every client an attorney and a social work staff member, and teams are additionally supported by Parent Advocates. CFR’s Parent Advocates are parents with direct personal experience of being impacted by the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), such as having been investigated or prosecuted by ACS or lost temporary custody of their children to foster care or otherwise due to the ACS involvement. CFR was the first agency in the country to integrate parents with lived experience into legal teams. Beginning with just a handful of staff, CFR now has more than 120 staff serving more than 2400 parents annually in Manhattan and Queens. CFR has been the primary, county-wide provider of legal services to indigent parents in Manhattan Family Court since 2007 and in Queens Family Court since 2011. 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 2019, we launched two new initiatives: a Youth Defense Practice, to bring our model to youth being prosecuted in family court and in the criminal court Youth Parts; and a Community Advocacy Project, to represent parents during a child protective investigation (prior to court involvement) and to assist parents in clearing their names from state maltreatment records. We regularly train over 500 practitioners annually around the country on strategies to promote family preservation and on holistic, interdisciplinary representation and advocate at the city, state and national level for policies that promote parent engagement and justice for families
Under the supervision and guidance of CFR’s Criminal Defense Supervisor, and Youth Defense Supervisor or Senior Staff Attorney, the Criminal and Youth Defense Attorney’s primary responsibility will be to represent clients in their concurrent criminal cases, and delinquency and criminal matters. The Youth Defense component of this position will be based in Queens, however the candidate should expect to appear primarily in Queens but also in Manhattan for the adult criminal defense cases. The candidate will work collaboratively with clients’ legal teams, comprised of attorneys, social work staff, paralegals and parent advocates; clients’ legal teams may involve staff from the family, immigration or housing units.
The candidate should expect to:
- provide advice and guidance to legal teams on potential criminal issues that arise on clients’ cases;
- maintain new and evolving youth and criminal defense data in CMS and client legal notes;
- keep files up to date;
- keep additional data related to deliverables for private funders supporting the juvenile and criminal practice and/or to meet with prospective and current funders;
- and help to inform and grow CFR’s juvenile and criminal defense practices.
Qualifications
Candidates for this position should have a minimum of 3 years experience representing indigent clients in either adult criminal defense cases, or juvenile delinquency proceedings, including representation of clients on pre-trial suppression hearings, trial, sentencing and or disposition hearings, on both misdemeanor and felony cases. This is the ideal position for a professional who enjoys taking initiative and developing best practices in a new program and who enjoys the exhilaration and challenges of a growing endeavor.
Candidates who are bilingual in Spanish are strongly encouraged to apply.