Counsel - Building The Bench

Job title Building the Bench Counsel Reports to Helen Rosenthal Building the Bench Director FLSA Status Exempt Position Alliance for Justice (AFJ) is a national association of over 140 organizations representing a broad array of groups committed to progressive values and the creation of an equitable, just, and free society. AFJ is headquartered in Washington, DC, with remote staff in various other locations. For more information about Alliance for Justice , please visit.

Job Purpose

AFJ and AFJ Action Campaign are seeking a lawyer with two or more years of experience to serve in the role of Building the Bench Counsel. The Counsel will be an integral part of the Justice Team and will help develop and achieve AFJ and AFJ Action Campaign’s Building the Bench (BtB) goals. Those goals include transforming our courts by developing a pool of highly qualified state and federal judicial nominees to put forward for selection, as well as a complementary campaign to highlight the importance of filling those vacancies with professionally and demographically diverse movement lawyers.
The BtB Counsel will help lead BtB’s tracking, training, advocacy, research, coalition, and Judicial Legacies work, with primary responsibility for tracking systems, research, and event management. At times, the Counsel will also assist the federal court team and the state courts team with post-nomination work like advocacy, nominee reports, substantive reports, and multimedia campaigns.
The BtB program continues to evolve in response to changes in judicial selection and the broader legal and political landscape. We are looking for someone who combines strong legal judgment with intellectual curiosity, enjoys building relationships across the legal community, and is eager to develop thoughtful new approaches that strengthen our research, outreach, and long-term judicial pipeline.

Duties and Responsibilities

The Counsel will report to the Building the Bench Director and will be responsible for the following:
- Identify and research potential qualified candidates for the BtB pipeline, with an emphasis on expanding the professional and demographic diversity of future nominees;

- Oversee the research of potential nominees, including in coordination with law firms, initiative partners, outside counsel, and volunteers;

- Review and edit research, op-eds, fact sheets, and reports for our federal and state courts work, including those about specific nominees as well as substantive topics like judicial diversity;

- Maintain and improve data tracking systems, processes, and workflows — including spreadsheets and databases — that inform strategy and strengthen candidate recruitment, outreach, and the overall effectiveness of the BtB program;

- Identify opportunities to leverage emerging technologies to strengthen BtB’s research, outreach, candidate recruitment and tracking, and operational effectiveness;

- Assist BtB Director to set team strategies, identify geographic priorities, and craft a continually developing work plan for BtB and judicial legacies;

- Draft, review, and edit communications materials for BtB, including fact sheets, blog posts, reports, website content, press materials, and social media;

- Support meetings with key legislative and executive offices in coordination with the state and federal courts teams;

- Liaise and help build relationships with partner groups, nominations coalition, AFJ members, and other thought-leaders and allied organizations;

- Cultivate relationships with attorneys, community leaders, and partner organizations to identify, recruit, and support prospective judicial candidates;

- Coordinate with the state and federal courts teams to develop relationships with key judicial gatekeepers;

- Speak at legal and policy conferences, and brief academics, member organizations, and other audiences on BtB and other initiatives;

- Identify state and federal judges who should be honored for their legacies and