Staff Attorney, Neighborhood Stabilization Project (Foreclosure Prevention and Community Economic Development))

Legal Services NYC (LSNYC) fights poverty and seeks racial, social and economic justice for low-income New Yorkers. For over 50 years, we have challenged systemic injustices that trap people in poverty and provided legal services that help our clients meet basic needs for housing, income and economic security, family and immigration stability, education, and health care. LSNYC is the largest civil legal services provider in the country; our staff of more than 600 people in neighborhood-based offices and outreach sites across all five boroughs helps hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers annually. We partner with scores of community-based and client-run organizations, elected officials, public agencies, pro bono lawyers, and the courts to maximize our effectiveness. Our work fights discrimination and helps to achieve equity for all low-income New Yorkers.

LSNYC employees have numerous opportunities for growth and professional development, including access to our internal Justice Learning Center, which provides opportunities to earn free CLEs and gain experience as a trainer. 

Immediate Job Opening

Staff Attorney

Neighborhood Stabilization Project (Foreclosure Prevention and Community Economic Development)

Bronx Legal Services seeks a Staff Attorney for its Neighborhood Stabilization Project to start immediately.

About Bronx Legal Services 

Bronx Legal Services seeks a dynamic and experienced attorney to join its Neighborhood Stabilization Project, a combined practice unit that provides direct legal representation to individual homeowners on a wide range of foreclosure-related matters including predatory lending practices and real estate abuses, and provides transactional legal counsel to underserved groups in the borough such as not-for-profit organizations, low-income housing cooperatives, and small businesses. We are looking for a highly motivated individual who thrives in a fast-paced environment and can manage multiple projects at once.

Bronx Legal Services is part of Legal Services NYC (LSNYC), the largest provider of free civil legal services in the country. The Bronx Office is comprised of 185+ staff including attorneys, paralegals, social workers, and support staff. It is a diverse and unionized office that provides high-quality free legal services in the areas of foreclosure prevention, community economic development, eviction defense, tenant’s rights advocacy, family law and the protection of domestic violence survivors, public benefits, employment, immigration, consumer rights, education, and disability and serves LGBTQ+ residents of the Bronx. We seek equal access to the legal system for low-income Bronx residents through a range of legal services, education, and community partnerships.

Bronx Legal Services prides itself on its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) efforts. As a social justice organization, we are committed to fighting for a workplace that is as diverse, equitable, and inclusive as possible for everyone. Our citywide DEIB committee and numerous affinity groups work to foster collegial relationships among staff and allow staff to explore and advocate for racial justice and anti-oppression growth within our organization and through our legal work. All employees are expected to learn about, seek to understand, and work to realize our DEIB goals

Role and Responsibilities

The attorney selected for this position will be expected to handle a diverse and high- volume caseload that involves litigating a mix of individual foreclosure actions, partition cases, predatory lending, and deed theft cases. The attorney may also represent homeowners in foreclosure-related ancillary proceedings in the Surrogate’s Court for letters of administration or in Bankruptcy Court on Chapter 7 and 13 petitions to avert foreclosure. We operate and staff a weekly off-site clinic to screen distressed homeowners for assistance, which the selected attorney will staff on a rotational basis with other attorneys in the unit to conduct intakes. Conducting outreach and community education are integral aspects of our work and will require occasional evening and weekend work.

The attorney will also be expected to work on community economic development assignments involving the representation of low-income cooperative buildings on transactional matters that lead to the preservation of existing affordable housing stock, assisting small businesses in commercial lease disputes, assisting not-for-profit organizations with corporate formation, and litigating matters aimed at challenging discriminatory and unfair housing practices.

Participation in coalition meetings and lobbying efforts on topics related to the work is required. Timely inputting of case notes and maintaining records in our case management system is also req