Paralegal Job

We are a boutique employment law firm located in downtown Flushing, where we conduct diverse practices and specialize in employment wage-and-hour and discrimination litigation. We are one of the largest firms in terms of case load in the nation for Fair Labor Standards Act wage-and-hour cases and the largest case load for the Chinese-American immigrant community, with 200+ cases currently pending in the federal courts in NY, and throughout the US.

SEEKING one or two highly motivated and qualified recent college graduates who is bilingual in Chinese or Spanish to commit to one or two years.

As 85% of our clients are Chinese-speaking immigrant workers and 10% of our clients are Spanish-speaking immigrant workers, you will be leveraging your fluency in either Chinese and/or Spanish to help them recover owed wages and stolen tips.

If you are thinking of attending law school in the future, or be a practicing attorney this is a perfect opportunity for you to expose yourself to all aspects of the litigation process, hone your general skillset in database and calendar management skills while also making a positive impact for the immigrant-worker community in the United States. While you will begin as an entry-level paralegal, we will commit to train you to become a highly proficient law clerk capable of applying your skillsets in law school or even after law school if you commit to the work.

A career at Troy Law puts you at the cutting edge of the nation's wage-and-hour and employment litigation advocacy. We are one of the largest firms in case load in the nation's Fair Labor Standards Act wage-and-hour litigation, and the largest firm in caseloads for the Chinese American immigrant community, with over 300 cases pending in federal and state courts throughout the nation. 

It is a challenge that demands a demonstrated interest in the employment and consumer protection law, the keen intellectual curiosity of an academic and a passion for public interest. The experience, exposure and relationships you gain here will put you on a path to a distinguished career in the public services. The connections you forge and the experience you gain are invaluable, and Troy Team alumni have gone on become federal and state judicial clerks, civil rights attorneys at the ACLU, Legal Aid Society, and Public Defenders' Offices, leaders in the ABA, NYSBA, and NYC Bar Non-Profit/ Public Interest Sector, and associates at Big Law.

You will be joining a diverse group of talented professionals in a close-knit team working to fight fiercely for the rights of the American immigrant worker community and fearlessly to protect the everyday consumers from big corporations. Fellow coworkers serve as mentors and are graduates of top law schools and universities across the nation including Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, Columbia, NYU, Fordham, Cornell, Boston, Vanderbilt, Emory and Tulane Law Schools.

Qualifications

Chinese or Spanish-language skills required

College graduate, BA/BS degree 

Passion about immigrant workers’ rights

Proactive team player

Efficient and fast learner

Can handle stress and a fast-paced environment

One year commitment required, two-year commitment strongly preferred

Prior work experience preferred

Pay

This is an in-person paid an hourly rate range of between $18-$25/hour for LLM's; $25-$30/hour for JD's to start during the first three-month training period, with performance review and potential raise.

Responsibilities will include answering the office telephone and taking messages, calendaring, handling the mail, opening and closing case files, case management, time card entries and paystub analysis and other general office administrative tasks.

Detailed Timeline (Tentative) of what you may expect to learn as a paralegal at our firm

If accepted, for the first three months (training period), you can expect to gain expertise in all aspects of civil litigation process, including serving and drafting affidavits of service; draft mediation/ settlement position letters; propounding and responding to interrogatories, document production requests, requests to admit; drafting affidavits in support of motions of default and conditional collective certification; and enforcement of judgments.

You will be assigned shadow client intakes, for affidavits in support of default, motions for conditional certification, and opposing dispositive motions in addition to handling phone calls in a courteous and professional manner, and administrative tasks, including the docketing of court emails, submission of electronics permit requests for conferences in the Southern District federal court, rescheduling court conferences with the judge and opposing counsel, and the translation of and mailing out of out of Notice of Pendency to potential Fair Labor Standards Act Conditional Collective Certification opt-in Plaintiffs.

Subsequently, for the following 3 months, you will be assigned individual cases which you will be responsible for, conduct client intake in support of motions for default and conditional collective certification; compute wage-and-hour shortfall damages; help draft NLRB and EEOC charges; and really produce almost-final drafts of opening briefs of motions of default and conditional collective certification. You will also help the firm conduct the property and defendant assets searches leading up to a complaint or judgment enforcement.

From months 7 through 9, our hope is that you will help us deploy the projects which we began in August. At the same time, you will not only be up-to-speed with your own case, but will begin to help take charge of the calendaring and the management of the office on the database system to ensure that deadlines are being met by the office attorneys. This includes the scheduling of stenographers, interpreters and the serving of subpoena to third parties. You will ensure client attendance at depositions, court conferences, and office appointments, and help promote the firm’s presence whether in print or online. We will train you in research in LexisNexis Advance and WestLaw, and you will draft initial drafts of letter motions to judge and do some light legal research where needed.

For the last 3 months, we hope to have successfully delivered our wage-and-hour clients’ cases such that we can really focus on expanding our consumer protection practice. Your role in this will be helping us in conducting research to relevant case law and similar past cases leading up to the evaluation of consumers’ claims and the filing of the complaint.

In addition to the rough outline of hopes of what we hope you might get out of the fellowship, two longer-term projects that you might be interested in participating in are:

A web database of individual rules of district court judges and magistrates.

Class action websites for each of the conditional or Rule 23 class action cases that we handle, and to allow for “easy” opt-ins using social media instead of traditional mailing.

Lastly, if you like the work that you are doing, you will be automatically considered for extension for the Troy Law Litigation Fellowship for another year.

Fellow coworkers serve as mentors and are graduates of top law schools across the nation including Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, Columbia, NYU, Fordham, Cornell, Boston, Vanderbilt, Emory and Tulane Law Schools. Former employees have gone on to work for the Legal Aid Society, Asian Americans for Equities, and attend the Law & Entrepreneurship program at Cornell Law School.

While the scheduling is flexible, please do not apply unless you are available for an in-person interview in Flushing, Queens.

No phone calls please.