Family Law Paralegal​/Legal Assistant

Family Law Paralegal/Legal Assistant

Full-Time, Exempt

Hybrid (three to four days in-person minimum)

“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 to solve this, we just need to discover what the steps are. 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.

To achieve this ambitious 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 having a systemic impact on how we, as a society, ensure justice for all.

As the Family Law Paralegal, you will provide critical support to our family law team by ensuring all of our family law clients receive excellent legal services. Our family practice team helps to heal families and communities, reduce conflict, and set our clients (and their children) up for future success. Our unique and innovative model of practice involves advising and representing both men and women in all areas of family law and victim’s rights, including child custody and visitation, child support and parentage, divorce, Domestic Violence Restraining Orders, guardianship, adoption, victim compensation, and protection of rights pursuant to Marsy’s Law.

Our clients are incredibly brave and resilient, and we seek to support them when they face an intense or contentious case in court.

Day-to-day tasks include: providing basic rights advice (with attorney supervision), conducting intakes, completing court forms for clients’ cases, triaging potential clients, coordinating service of process, physically filing documents at SF Superior Court, e-filing documents, communicating case progress to clients, and communicating with clients, including drafting letters and other correspondence. You will be the paralegal for the entire family law practice and will be working with multiple attorneys.

You will be providing support for the entire practice’s caseload and also managing your own individual caseload. The work is fast-paced and will require you to be organized and self-managed, think critically and dynamically, and demonstrate empathy and awareness in understanding the needs of our community. Overall, this position is intended to be a challenging yet extremely rewarding experience for someone looking to make a difference in clients’ lives with an innovative, results-oriented, and fast-growing organization.

• Embrace and embody our mission of universal access to civil legal aid and ensure that everyone in our service area with a viable family law issue gets appropriate help, including legal advice and representation.
• Be responsible for your own caseload of clients, with attorney supervision.
• Support our growing Family Law team (currently one managing attorney and three staff attorneys) and interns/fellows/volunteers.
• Execute timely filings (including drafting and compiling forms to file in court, such as fee waivers, proofs of service, and other standard filings) and mailings, ensuring they are high-quality and within the deadline. Communicate with the clerks about scheduling or filing issues. E-file and physically go to SF Superior Court (400 McAllister St.) 1-3 times a week to file, deliver courtesy copies, and/or pick up orders.
• Oversee service of process (personal, substitute, and mail). Understand the civil procedure behind service. Use creative methods to locate and serve evasive defendants. Coordinate with the sheriffs or private process servers to ensure personal service is completed by the deadline.
• Work with the attorney and client to assist with discovery requests, fact-gathering for the client’s case using information technologies, calling possible witnesses, or business or government agencies.
• Review documents with clients and obtain…