Staff Attorney

Staff Attorney
Location: New York City

Why Work With Us
Join a small, collaborative team committed to environmental justice, climate, and clean energy work. We offer the opportunity to think creatively about legal issues, build expertise, and work on significant environmental matters, including addressing environmental degradation that often has inequitable impacts. We are passionate about building and sustaining an inclusive and equitable working environment for our staff. We offer a generous benefits package through NYU, which includes tuition remission and retirement benefits. Salary: $80,000-$90,000.

Who We Are Looking For
We are looking for a self-motivated attorney to work with us on environmental justice, climate, clean energy, and other environmental legal issues. The attorney will be involved in many of the Center’s activities, including working collaboratively with state attorney general offices, researching legal matters, conceiving programs and events, and developing academic and other writing projects.

The ideal candidate will have an enthusiasm for working on issues in environmental, energy, climate, or civil rights law and policy areas; 2-4 years of legal experience; and enthusiasm for working in a small-team, entrepreneurial office setting. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team and encourage women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community to apply.

About the Center
The State Impact Center is a nonpartisan academic think tank that specializes in clean energy, climate change and environmental issues. We undertake academic research, hold workshops, and issue special reports that advance legal and policy analysis. We also support State Attorneys General (“AGs”) in defending and promoting clean energy, climate and environmental laws and policies. The Center provides assistance to AGs in a number of ways, including:

• Providing legal assistance to interested attorneys general on specific administrative, judicial or legislative matters involving clean energy, climate change and environmental interests of regional and national significance.
• Working with interested attorneys general to support NYU Law Fellows who serve as special assistant attorneys general in state attorney general offices, focusing on clean energy, climate and environmental matters.
• Serving as a centralized public source of information for ongoing attorneys general initiatives and helping to enhance the public’s understanding of the importance of the clean energy, climate change and environmental matters that attorneys general are pursuing.
• Building an environmental justice resource area focused on promoting a just transition to clean energy.
• Detailed Position Description

The State Impact Center is recruiting a Staff Attorney to begin immediately. Our offices are located in New York City, and we are following NYU Law School’s return to in-person work plans, with remote and hybrid accomodations available, as needed. The Staff Attorney will play a key role in furthering the Center’s mission of supporting the work of state attorneys general on climate, clean energy, and environmental issues, with a focus on environmental justice. This will include legal research and writing projects, following administrative and judicial proceedings, and developing reports and other materials to support and highlight the work of state AGs.

Our small, collaborative team values each person’s ideas and contributions. The Staff Attorney would be involved in identifying and executing legal research and writing tasks, as well as thinking creatively about reports, events, and other projects.

Diversity is a core value of the Center. We are passionate about building and sustaining an inclusive and equitable working environment for our staff. We believe every member on our team enriches our diversity by exposing us to a broad range of ways to understand and engage with the world, identify challenges, and to discover, design and deliver solutions.

Core Responsibilities:

• Legal Research: conduct legal research on issues related to environmental justice, climate, clean energy, and environmental matters.
• Legal Writing: draft legal memoranda and other documents outlining relevant issues.
• Issue Identification: review and track relevant case materials, such as briefing and comments, to identify key legal issues for attention.
• Projects: draft, review, and collaborate on Center publications. Other duties as assigned. 
• Other duties as assigned.

Requirements and Qualifications:

• Education: J.D. from an accredited law school and admitted to practice in or willing to seek admission in New York. 
• Experience: 2-4 years of post-graduate legal experience, including environmental, climate, energy, or civil rights work; demonstrated familiarity with administrative and regulatory processes; public interest commitment. 
• Research and writing: excellent research, analytic, and writing skills; the ability to tailor written products to different audiences and effectively communicate legal issues to lawyer and nonlawyer audiences; experience editing work of others as well as incorporating feedback.
• Judgment: exercises sound judgment and affirmatively raises concerns; self-directed; demonstrates an awareness of and sensitivity to diverse backgrounds and perspectives. 
• Collaborative: ability to work well within a team in a fast-paced environment; ability to contribute original ideas as well as research and support projects developed by the team. 
• Deadlines: ability to manage simultaneous issues, multitask, and prioritize; ability to develop and adhere to a schedule to complete a project. 

Applications will be considered until the position is filled.

Salary: $80,000-$90,000. Benefits offered include medical/dental/vision, tuition remission at certain NYU schools, retirement benefits, and more.

Interested candidates can apply by sending a resume and cover letter to stateimpactcenter@nyu.edu. Please send your application as a single PDF file saved as LastName.FirstName.pdf. If chosen as a finalist, a writing sample and reference will be required. The Center is unable to review applications submitted through alternate methods, such as LinkedIn or Indeed. Women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community are encouraged to apply.

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