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About the Role

The ACLU seeks a Senior Advisor, Affiliate Legal Programs to serve as a senior resource and strategic advisor to affiliate Legal Directors and their teams. This role strengthens affiliate legal programs by developing and implementing improvements in legal strategy, docket development, cooperating attorney relationships, program infrastructure, staffing, and alignment with affiliate priorities. The position also helps affiliates drive legal work as part of an integrated advocacy strategy and identifies emerging needs, shares best practices, and develops resources across the affiliate network.

Responsibilities

Serve as a senior resource and strategic advisor to affiliate Executive Directors, Legal Directors, and other leaders building and sustaining high-quality, effective legal programs tailored to their differing circumstances.
Help leaders assess the strengths and limitations of their current programs and proactively identify opportunities for improvement.
Work with affiliate leaders to develop and implement strategies to strengthen legal program quality, effectiveness, and impact.
Support affiliate Executive Directors in hiring and onboarding Legal Directors.
Advise Legal Directors on building and managing strong legal programs, including developing strategically focused, organizationally-aligned, and appropriately resourced legal dockets, case selection and prioritization, litigation management, staffing and supervision, program planning, intake and referral systems, and effective management of cooperating attorney relationships, and other external legal resources.
Work with Legal Directors and legal staff to understand legal program strengths, needs, and opportunities.
Help affiliates set ambitious, right-sized goals and support implementation and progress toward those goals.
Identify, develop, and scale effective practices for building and running powerful and impactful affiliate legal programs.
Translate learnings into practical frameworks, tools, and models, and proactively support their adoption and adaptation by affiliates.
Help affiliate leaders develop, implement, and manage integrated advocacy approaches that align legal, organizing, legislative, communications, and other capacities to advance shared goals.
Promote and support the application of Department resources to advance meaningful improvements in affiliate legal programs.
Develop practical tools for assessing affiliate legal program capacity, effectiveness, and progress.
Establish approaches to regular reflection, debriefing, and learning that help Legal Directors and affiliates understand what is working, where change is needed, and what can be learned across the network.
Identify and synthesize trends, innovations, challenges, and lessons across affiliate legal programs and translate that learning into practical guidance, tools, and advice.
Identify and leverage technologies, tools, and operational efficiencies that strengthen affiliate legal programs and increase their effectiveness.
Create and sustain learning communities or other cohorts for affiliate legal staff, including ongoing cohorts, in-person convenings, workshops, and other opportunities focused on skills and topics critical to the leadership, management, growth, and impact of affiliate legal programs.
Represent the Department in National and affiliate program and legal planning processes, ensuring alignment with broader organizational strategy, integrated advocacy approaches, and nationwide priorities.
Bring the perspectives, experience, and needs of affiliate legal programs into National strategic and programmatic discussions.
Lead or facilitate collaboration between National and affiliate legal programs around shared priorities, including multi-state legal strategies and projects.
Strengthen connections between affiliate legal programs and relevant National departments, proactively surfacing opportunities, barriers, and points of tension and helping colleagues identify solutions.
Advise ASNI colleagues on grants and other investments in affiliate legal programs, bringing substantive expertise about legal program capacity, quality, sustainability, and impact to inform investment and programmatic decisions.
Seek advice and counsel of Department leadership on matters related to high-functioning leadership teams.
Escalate matters to Department leadership where there is significant organizational risk.
Work closely with ASNI colleagues responsible for affiliate strategic planning and leadership development to integrate legal priorities and capacity into broader organizational strategies and structures.
Strengthen legal leadership pipelines, competencies and succession planning.
Support a culture of transparency and trust by proactively sharing relevant information with ASNI leadership.
Manage or work with vendors and consultants, as appropriate.
Contribute to special projects, events, and organizational priorities.
Perform other role-related duties to support the department's objectives.

Requirements

Significant experience leading or advancing a civil rights/civil liberties legal program at a national and/or state organization
Experience recruiting, training, managing, and motivating diverse and high-performing legal teams in a non-profit setting
Demonstrated experience and familiarity with building legal strategies or programs that integrate advocacy and communications
Very strong verbal and written communication skills
Strong facilitation, strategic advising, and presentation skills, including experience leading workshops, trainings, convenings, and planning processes.
Ability to build relationships and trust within a large and diverse group of stakeholders
Highly organized with attention to detail
Experience with managing legal staff or familiarity with best practice approaches to people management
Strong project management skills, with the ability to lead complex workstreams and manage multiple priorities to meet deadlines effectively
Willing to conquer the “small tasks” with an understanding of their vital importance to the success of the organization
Thinks strategically, critically, and creatively

Skills

Legal program management
Legal strategy development
Docket development and management
Cooperating attorney relationship management
Program infrastructure development
Staffing and leadership development
Integrated advocacy strategy
Litigation assessment
Network-wide program development
Best practices sharing
Resource development
Facilitation
Strategic advising
Presentation skills
Relationship building
Project management
People management

Location

New York, NY
Washington, DC
San Francisco, CA
Durham, NC

Work Type

Full-time
Hybrid
Remote

Experience Level

Senior

Education Level

JD required

Salary/Compensations

$167,568

Benefits

Generous paid time-off policy
Comprehensive healthcare benefits (including medical, dental and vision coverage, parental leave, gender affirming care & fertility treatment)
401k plan and employer match
Annual professional development funds
Internal professional development programs and workshops

About the Company

For over 100 years, the ACLU has worked to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
The ACLU takes up the toughest civil liberties cases and issues to defend all people.
We know that great people make a great organization.
We value our people and know that what we offer is essential not just their work, but to their overall well-being.

Equal Opportunity

Accessibility, equity, diversity and inclusion are core values of the ACLU and central to our work to advance liberty, equality, and justice for all.
We are a community committed to learning and growth, humility and grace, transparency and accountability.
We believe in a collective responsibility to create a culture of belonging for all people within our organization – one that respects and embraces difference; treats everyone equitably; and empowers our colleagues to do the best work possible.
We are as committed to anti-oppression, anti-ableism, and anti-racism internally as we are externally.
With this commitment in mind, we strongly encourage applications from all qualified individuals without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, marital status, citizenship, disability, veteran status and record of arrest or conviction, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
The ACLU is committed to providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities.