Job Description
Organization: **MEMBERS ONLY**SIGN UP NOW*** (BDS) Job Title: Law Student Internship, Immigration Practice – Summer 2025 Salary: Not specified Experience: Second-year law students preferred
BDS is a public defense office that works to represent low-income New Yorkers in criminal, family, immigration, and civil legal matters. The organization's focus is on addressing the disproportionate impact of the legal system on Black and Brown communities living below the poverty level in Brooklyn.
- Represents thousands of clients each year with diverse, complex, and multi-faceted legal needs. - Provides interdisciplinary teams of attorneys, social workers, and advocates to offer a wide range of legal and advocacy services, including housing, public benefits, education, and employment issues. - The Immigration Practice at BDS is a collaborative team that advises criminal and family defense attorneys on immigration matters and represents clients in removal proceedings and complex applications before USCIS. - The interdisciplinary legal teams at BDS work at the intersection of immigrant rights and the criminal legal system to reunite people with their families and communities. - The organization is committed to professional development, sustainability, and equity in standing up for the rights of immigrants and communities of color.
Interns in the Immigration Practice at BDS will have the opportunity to work with either the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) team or the Immigrant Community Action Project (ICAP) team. The NYIFUP team has been serving as assigned counsel for indigent New Yorkers in detention since 2013, while the ICAP team represents indigent clients in non-detained removal proceedings and affirmative applications before USCIS.
Responsibilities for both NYIFUP and ICAP interns include:
- Collaborating with attorneys, social workers, paralegals, and administrative staff to design case strategy, develop case facts, and build trusting relationships with clients. - Working with clients to determine their immigration status, eligibility for relief, and priorities in resolving their immigration case. - Assisting attorneys with writing declarations, motions, and briefs on a variety of removability, relief, and appellate issues before the New York immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals. - Assisting attorneys with clients' affirmative applications before USCIS. - Completing additional responsibilities as assigned.
Desired qualifications for the internship include:
- Second-year law students are strongly preferred. - Demonstrated commitment to social justice, understanding of challenges facing low-income, immigrant communities and communities of color, and interest in immigrant rights and criminal justice. - Demonstrated ability to perform nuanced legal research and writing at the highest standard. - Highly organized, ability to lead and work collaboratively with others, and attentive to details. - Creativity, determination, and the ability to provide compassionate assistance to clients in crisis. - Familiarity and/or lived personal experience with the U.S. immigration system. - Fluency or high proficiency in Spanish is strongly preferred, as many clients are monolingual Spanish speakers. Fluency in other languages besides English is also preferred.
To apply, applicants should email a cover letter, resume, at least two references, and a writing sample of 5-10 pages to **MEMBERS ONLY**SIGN UP NOW*** with "BDS Summer 2025 Intern" in the subject line. Only applicants invited for interviews will be contacted. Language skills and proficiency levels should be clearly noted, and applicants can indicate a preference to work with either NYIFUP or ICAP, or have no preference.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the intern class is filled, but BDS recommends submitting applications no later than November 1, 2024. Join BDS in their mission to provide quality legal representation and advocacy to those in need in the Brooklyn community.
