Job o’ the Day: Farmworker Staff Attorney with Oregon Law Center
Headquartered in Portland, the Oregon Law Center provides free civil legal services to low-income individuals. Their mission is to achieve justice for low income communities of Oregon by providing a full range of the highest quality civil legal services.
Their office currently has a vacancy for a staff attorney. From the PSJD job listing:
Oregon Law Center (OLC) seeks a bilingual (Spanish/English) staff attorney for its Farmworker Program to focus on issues affecting employment and other priority issues for agricultural workers in Oregon including health and safety and unlawful discrimination.
OLC does not receive funding from the federal Legal Services Corporation.
The Farmworker Program of the OLC consists of attorneys and community educators whose focus is statewide and who specialize in representing farmworkers. The client-based priorities are employment, housing for farmworkers, individual rights and occupational health and safety. The majority of our clients speak Spanish or one of the indigenous languages native to the southern states of Mexico, such as Mixteco, Triqui or Zapoteco. They experience a wide variety of legal problems, including unpaid wages, poor working conditions including exposure to pesticides, unsafe housing, sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination, and retaliation for the exercise of their legal rights.
The attorney in this position is expected to engage in a combination of impact litigation and service cases, with a significant emphasis on impact work in state and federal courts. An important aspect of this position is to engage in intensive community outreach together with community educators involving educational presentations to groups of farmworkers and visits to migrant labor camps. The practice requires the ability to handle irregular hours, travel, and to work creatively and collaboratively both internally and with other community partners. The attorney in this position is expected to handle cases originating from all agricultural areas of the state.
Recent law graduates are welcome to apply. The application deadline is February 25, 2013. For more information, view the full job listing at PSJD.org (log-in required).