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<p><b>About CFR</b></p>
<p> The Center for Family Representation Inc. (CFR) is an award-winning, innovative law and policy organization that serves primarily Black and Brown families and youth in Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx with an interdisciplinary legal defense model that serves more than 2400 clients every year. CFR was originally founded in 2002 to dramatically change the trajectory of indigent parents being prosecuted by the City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). Our goal is to defend and protect our clients’ rights, reduce the harm of family separation and prevent or minimize the time any child spends in the foster system. CFR provides interdisciplinary family defense with a model that was unique at our founding and that is now being replicated nationally: we assign every client an attorney and a social work staff member, and teams have the support of parent advocates, who are parents with direct personal experience of being investigated and prosecuted by ACS. CFR was the first agency in the country to integrate parents with lived experience into legal teams and now has 6 parent advocates working in all three of our family defense locations. CFR’s Community Advocacy Project represents parents during a child protective investigation (to avoid court involvement where possible) and assists parents in clearing their names from state maltreatment records.</p>
<p> As an agency committed to securing justice for families, we built the Youth Defense practice (YDP) to defend youth at risk of family separation through incarceration. YDP uses the same interdisciplinary model to represent youth being prosecuted in Queens and Manhattan in Supreme Court Youth Parts, during Probation Adjustment and in Delinquency proceedings in Family Court. CFR’s Home for Good program provides legal and social work services to clients in immigration, civil legal services and criminal defense matters, to afford clients an efficient and well-coordinated one-stop solution to a range of issues that threaten family stability.</p>
<p> Recognized as experts in our fields, we annually train over 500 practitioners in the city, state and around the country on strategies to promote family preservation and interdisciplinary representation, and we provide community based “Know Your Rights” presentations to parents, youth and service providers. We advocate at the city, state and national level for policies that reduce the harm of family separation, and promote parent engagement and justice for youth and families.</p>
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<p><b><br> About the Position</b></p>
<p> Under the supervision and guidance of CFR’s Criminal Defense Supervisor, and Youth Defense Supervisor or Senior Staff Attorney, the <b>Criminal and Youth Defense Attorney</b>’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.</p>
<p> The candidate should expect to:</p>
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<li><p> provide advice and guidance to legal teams on potential criminal issues that arise on clients’ cases;</p></li>
<li><p> maintain new and evolving youth and criminal defense data in CMS and client legal notes;</p></li>
<li><p> keep files up to date;</p></li>
<li><p> keep additional data related to deliverables for private funders supporting the juvenile and criminal practice and/or to meet with prospective and current funders;</p></li>
<li><p> and help to inform and grow CFR’s juvenile and criminal defense practices.</p></li>
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<p><br> Throughout the pandemic our policy has been that all staff need to be in person when client or role responsibilities require that. Our current policy is: all employees whose work is primarily working with clients will be able to work from home up to three days per week and will work in the office at least two days per week.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
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<p><br> Candidates who are bilingual in Spanish are strongly encouraged to apply.</p>
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