Staff Attorney​/Senior Staff Attorney

For nearly 100 years, the ACLU has been at the forefront of every major civil liberties fight in our country’s history. Whether it’s reducing the prison and jail population, achieving full equality for the LGBTQ community, reducing immigration detention, or ending unjust laws that strip people of their fundamental right to vote, we take up the toughest civil liberties issues to defend all individuals from government abuse and overreach.

With ACLU affiliate offices in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, we fight tirelessly to defend our rights in the courts, influence public policy, and empower communities to advance rights for all. The ACLU of Michigan, founded in 1959, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public interest organization dedicated to the defense and expansion of civil liberties and civil rights in Michigan.

We are a passionate, highly motivated group of lawyers, public policy experts, lobbyists, community organizers, communicators and fundraisers, and we’re looking for exceptional talent to join our team.

The ACLU is deeply committed to racial equity and social justice and is driven to act on these core values. Applicants must be able to recognize ways our identities intersect and play out in the work, especially with communities we serve, and must demonstrate the cultural competency to work with a diverse team and effectively partner with historically marginalized communities.

This is an incredibly exciting time to join the ACLU. Our membership has tripled, and we are building a more expansive advocacy infrastructure to increase the ACLU’s effectiveness in achieving its objectives. The ACLU of Michigan seeks an experienced staff attorney, who could be designated a Senior Staff Attorney depending on type and length of experience, to build, file, and litigate complex civil actions in state and federal court.

This will increase our capacity to push forward our proactive litigation agenda as well as engage in fast-moving, defensive battles against the Trump administration’s policies and other affronts to civil rights and civil liberties. In recent years, our attorneys have built and litigated high-profile class actions challenging mass deportations to Iraq , unconstitutional cash bail , tax foreclosures , and the Flint water crisis .

Check out our legal docket for more information about how we are fighting to protect civil rights and civil liberties.

The Position

The person hired into this position will litigate a wide variety of civil rights and civil liberties cases at the trial and appellate levels in both state and federal courts, acting as lead or co-counsel, and often in partnership with volunteer attorneys, coalition partners, and lawyers from the national ACLU. They will collaborate with staff in other departments to set goals and implement strategies that advance ACLU priorities and campaigns.

They will also represent the ACLU publicly through speaking engagements, media interviews, and community engagement. They may also be assigned a supervision role if needed. A significant goal of this position is to enable the ACLU of Michigan to respond quickly when significant civil rights and civil liberties issues present themselves in our communities. The legal department is currently comprised of a legal director, three senior staff attorneys, one staff attorney, one legal fellow, one attorney focused on racial justice, one attorney focused on LGBTQ+ rights, an immigrant rights coordinator, a program associate, two paralegals, and an investigator.

The ACLU of Michigan maintains staffed offices in Detroit and Grand Rapids.

Specific Responsibilities

• Legal
• Identify, investigate, develop and litigate high-impact civil rights and civil liberties cases in federal and state court. This includes identifying and recruiting plaintiffs, conducting factual investigation and legal research, preparing memoranda, writing demand letters, drafting pleadings and briefs, conducting discovery, arguing motions, trying cases, negotiating and overseeing implementation of judgments and settlement agreements, and representing clients in appellate proceedings if necessary.
• Write appellate and amicus…