About our Catholic Charities Family

We seek compassionate, talented individuals with a heart for helping others and making a positive impact on the lives of men, women, and children across our large region. People of faith helping people in need achieve self-sufficiency and live with dignity.

Job Description

The Unaccompanied Children Program of St. Frances Cabrini Center for Immigrant Legal Assistance is seeking a Senior Attorney.

Join the team as the Senior Attorney. The Senior Attorney is a member of the program’s supervisory team that helps set strategic priorities and formulate policies and procedures for the whole program. She or he is responsible for supervising a legal team in the provision of immigration legal services to clients served by St. Frances Cabrini Center for Immigrant Legal Assistance. Legal services include community outreach and legal education, legal workshops, legal intake, legal research, and individual legal representation. The Senior Attorney is expected to have and develop expertise in immigration law as well as stay up to date on immigration law and policies and to provide supervision, guidance, and mentorship to attorneys, pro bono counsel, paralegals, and/or law student interns. The Senior Attorney will contribute to identifying issues for impact advocacy and litigation to be undertaken by the Cabrini Center and/or other partners to advance immigrant rights and to make systemic changes.

The Expertise We’re Looking For

• You have a Juris Doctor degree from an ABA-accredited law school
• You have 2-4 years of experience as a practicing attorney
• You are licensed to practice law in the State of Texas and are in good standing
• You have a minimum 2-3 years of experience practicing immigration law before the USCIS and the EOIR
• You have a minimum of 2 years of experience supervising a team of lawyers and paralegals

The Skills and Assets You Bring, and More

• You have excellent legal research and writing skills
• You have excellent verbal and written communication and negotiation skills
• You are fully bilingual in Spanish and English (read, write and speak)
• You can handle a high-volume caseload, meet multiple deadlines, and execute other tasks simultaneously
• You have intermediate proficiency in Microsoft Office
• You have experience working with the immigrant community, this is an asset
• You have demonstrated multi-cultural understanding and experience

The Value You Deliver

You join Catholic Charities and help people in southeast Texas by providing caring, compassionate services and advocating for social justice in collaboration with parishes and communities.

What you Deliver

• Direct Representation: You provide direct representation to immigrant clients before the USCIS, Asylum Office or Immigration Court as well as state courts on a range of immigration matters, including affirmative asylum and removal defense. Your direct representation encompasses the following tasks: conduct legal intake and screening; interview clients, affiants, witness, experts, case managers, and others who can provide information or statement in furtherance of the principal client's immigration matters; draft, prepare and assemble relevant immigration petitions; conduct legal research; write memoranda of law, motions or briefs in support of applications and petitions filed before USCIS, Asylum office, State, Immigration and Federal Courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, Administrative Appeals Office, EOIR and other immigration agencies; prepare the client for interviews and court hearings
• Case Management: You maintain client physical and electronic files according to program requirements, including case notes, correspondence, filings, calendars, and dockets. Maintain a case status list and case service statistics for Cabrini Center and program funders. You participate in case reviews with attorney staff and support staff, and/or Managing Attorney/Legal Director, as applicable. You maintain a minimum of 30-40 active cases
• Meetings: You attend and participate in mandatory unit and Cabrini staff meetings, and other agency meetings. You participate on calls and meetings organized by funders, city-wide advocacy groups, local service providers and national support centers when appropriate and helpful
• Contract and Agency Compliance: You comply with all contract requirements. You provide data and statistical information for the grant, contract, and other reporting purposes. You provide accurate and timely monthly data, time logs, and reports for internal use, funder use, and other entity use. You participate in trainings, meetings, calls, etc. as required by funders or to serve program needs
• Outreaches: You participate in Charlas by presenting and performing legal consultations. You participate in program and agency community legal education and outreach efforts, particularly as they relate to issues of immigration law, providing direct information to prospective clients, attending information sessions on asylum, deportation, and other immigration relief, and conduct legal workshops and engage pro bono counsel in the provision of legal services
• Personnel: You provide day-to-day supervision to the legal team comprising staff attorneys, legal fellows, pro bono counsel, paralegal/legal assistants, administrative clerks, and interns. Provide periodic evaluation of staff performance
• Substantive Expertise: You develop expertise in general immigration law, including but not limited to Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, asylum, U visa, T visa, adjustment of status and other immigration relief available to Unaccompanied Minors, as well as naturalization, family immigration, DACA, and Temporary Protected Status
• Advocacy: You identify policy issues and coordinate with other units within Cabrini Center and the immigration bar in advancing advocacy agenda to promote immigrant rights
• Meeting Community Needs: You work with Cabrini leadership to evaluate program efficacy and engage in priority setting in line with community needs
• Program Administration: You develop and implement policies and procedures to ensure that the Cabrini Center provides high-quality legal services to clients and provide periodic training to Cabrini staff to maintain quality and standard of service
• Shelter Team: You oversee the staffing and operation of the assigned shelter team, to provide back-up support to facilitate detained children work as necessary; conduct regular team meeting to organize shelter schedule, allocate staffing resources and manage stakeholder relationships

How Your Work Impacts our Organization

The work you do will help us advocate for the vulnerable among us, a network of support services to people of all ages and from all walks of life and religious backgrounds.

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