Legal Assistant

Purpose: You’ll provide ongoing administrative, compliance and legal support to our long-term clients. This role will start part time training with compliance, research, drafting and phone answering. You may grow your role into full time and add client relationship and legal project management duties.

Location: Remote. Our firm is fully remote, we serve clients in the US, primarily Minnesota.

Days & Hours: This is a night shift role. You will have limited flexibility to set up your schedule provided there is substantial overlap with our office hours (M-F 9:00AM to 5:00PM CST). Core hours support is important to this role because you will need to work with the team and make or answer phone calls during business hours. Regular and prompt attendance for the schedule determined is important for the position.

Supervised by: Attorney/CEO

Education Required:
• Bachelor's degree in any field

Preferred fields of study:
• Business, Management, or Business Administration
• English, Communications, or Writing
• Political Science or Public Administration
• Paralegal Studies or Legal Studies
• Accounting or Finance

Note: A law degree is NOT required. Candidates with Philippine law degrees must demonstrate substantial experience working with US legal matters.

Experience Required:

Must have 3-5 years professional work experience in ONE of the following:
• Paralegal or legal assistant role supporting US-based law firms, attorneys, or US legal matters
• Tax, accounting, or business advisory firm serving US clients or US entities
• Corporate compliance, contracts, or regulatory role in US company or organization serving US clients
• Grant management, procurement, or compliance role working with US funding sources, US regulations, or US grant agreements
• Business operations in highly regulated US industry (healthcare, finance, real estate, etc.)

AND
• Have worked night shift before

Disposition Requirements:
• Enjoys highly variable work and uncertainty (you enjoy solving a new puzzle every day)
• Enjoys learning new things and can handle frequent changes in process
• Able to make mistakes, take accountability and be part of the solution moving forward
• Critical thinker, analytical, you look for patterns and think deeply about things
• Likes a fast-paced environment where things are always moving and changing
• Curious, self-starter who will pitch in, generally look for work to fill time
• Ask questions, looks for connections, notices when things don’t make sense
• Likes to think of possible solutions and be a team player
• Has a high level of attention to detail and accuracy
• Takes responsibility for errors and helps find solutions
• Has a growth mindset

This position is NOT a good fit for people who need strict routine, are rigid, get paralyzed when the answer isn’t crystal clear or must follow a checklist to the letter every time.

You may like this job if you get bored doing the same things over and over, you like to research and solve complex problems or you like using new software and trying new things.

Required Skills:
• Proficient at MS Office suite (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.)
• Excellent interpersonal / communication skills
• Fluent in English (verbal and written) to the point that conversation is easy

Technology Requirements:
You must have a Windows PC (laptop or desktop) with all of the following
• Dedicated computer that you use for work. Must be able to screen other users from confidential law firm and client data
• Valid install of Windows Pro 11 or higher operating system with TPM installed
• Chip must be Ryzen 5/Intel i5 (or higher)
• RAM of 16GB (or more)
You will be on the phone, in video calls and working on many cloud-based tools.
• High-speed internet (~35+ mbps down / ~20+ mbps up – or better)
• 1080p or better webcam
• Business appropriate headset with microphone for all meetings and calls
• Ability to set a professional background (real or virtual) for client video meetings
• You will be required to install our law firm’s MS365 device policies on your machine
• You will be required to encrypt your Windows machine with MS BitLocker
• You will be required to install free anti-virus programs like Malwarebytes, Piriform’s CCleaner
• You will be required to use (provided) Nord VPN when using public Wi-Fi or accessing many cloud-products or US state or federal government websites

Bonus Qualifications:
• Experience with scrum / agile project management methods (LEAN, Sigma 6, EOS, etc.)

About the work:

You will be expected to learn quickly and pick up complex ideas. This is not a job where you can pretend you know things, you will need to ask questions and admit you don’t know things (and look them up) constantly. I’ve been practicing for almost 20 years, and I still learn something new every day. My practice is a niche / expert area.

We work with charities. They are nonprofit corporations who have federal income tax exemption. There are many kinds of tax-exempt entities. We work with 501c3, 501c5, 501c6 or 501c7 and a few private foundations, but each client is unique.

These groups come from Minnesota, and also many other states. There are 50 states in the US. Each state has its own set of laws for nonprofit corporations. All tax-exempt entities are regulated by the US Federal Government’s Internal Revenue Service regulations. There are many layers of complexity to dig into in the legal work. It’s very interesting and not boring.

Also, all nonprofit corporations are businesses. They have contracts, employees, and all the regular issues of running a business. Business laws can be state or federal, depending on where the organization is or what the issue is.

Some things are clear cut – yes or no. Other things are best practice or a judgment call or up to a client’s risk tolerance. There can be a bit of ambiguity in this practice area, and it requires a lot of critical thinking, analysis and patience. If all of this sounds interesting, you might consider applying!

When starting out we will provide extensive paid, on the job training and orientation so you can learn the basics of nonprofit law.

You will work on our clients’ annual compliance and maintenance of their corporate status. You’ll also help draft documents in the background when you feel able. We will train you to answer calls to the office so you can start to get to know our clients.

Eventually, you can grow your role to manage a caseload of long-term clients and work collaboratively with me and the team on client-care, client-communication and projects supporting our clients.

Despite being in this nerdy, we're a fun loving and innovative group - this firm is not like most other law firms, Google my name “Jess Birken” to see some of the things I’m doing with the firm. Listen to an episode of my podcast Charity Therapy to get a sense of my personality. You'll be joining a small team that is 1/2 in US and 1/2 in PH and 100% remote.

We work hard but we have a lot of humor here too. I love using technology to solve problems or automate things, my firm runs on a subscription services program (not the billable hour – you can learn about how I d ---------- to do that on YouTube by searching my name).

And we really try to care for our client organizations. We’re like the family doctor, but for nonprofits.

This is a permanent position starting at 20 hrs/week. Open to full time work eventually.

Day to Day Work:

Your primary role is to support the attorney (me) in carrying out the legal representation. Just like in an operating room the medical team does everything that they can do besides cut into the patient. This way the hospital can help the most patients because the surgeon doesn’t spend time on other things.
For our firm the paralegal team does everything they can do besides give legal advice.

There are some things only I can do. That means you can do just about everything else.
You will work on the following areas:
• Client Intake, Client Onboarding, Corporate Maintenance in collaboration with the team
• Client Project Management using Scrum / Agile / Kanban methodology in AirTable
• Legal Research and Document Drafting using the internet, or in-house tools we use
• Client Relationship Management using MS Outlook, Zoom, Acuity, VOIP phone
• Law Firm Systems and Process Improvement by giving continuous feedback
• Closing Files and Client Offboarding in collaboration with the team

Systems Used:
MS Office, AirTable, Wildix VOIP phones, Dropbox, Slack, Zoom, PatternBuilder (fka AfterPattern), WordPress, VLex / Vincent AI, Tettra, Acuity Scheduling, Active Campaign, Jotform

Our Core Values:

We hire and conduct performance assessments based on our core values and the core behaviors that support them. In short, our values center on...
• Treating people like humans first
• Continuous process improvement and efficiency
• Taking immediate responsibility for our mistakes and the plan to fix them
• Focusing on what we can control – how we respond to things
• Creating win-wins and long-term relationships
• Simplifying or making things easier

Benefits:
• Focus on tea ---------- mbers’ wellbeing
• Work-from-home with flexible night schedule
• Paid PH holidays so you can be with family (upon hiring)
• 10 days paid time off after 1 year anniversary
• December 13 mo pay after 1 year anniversary
• Friendly, caring remote office culture
• Opportunities for advancement
• Paid training and development opportunities

For the first year you will have the following holidays off, unpaid when they fall on a business day: Your Birthday!, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Labor Day (May 1), Independence Day (June 12), National Heroes Day (Last Monday of August), All Saints Day (Nov 1), All Souls Day (Nov 2) New Year's Eve Day, New Year's Day, Christmas Eve Day, Christmas Day and 10 days off unpaid. Once you have been under contract for 12 months you will have those same days and holidays as paid time off. December 13th month are discretionary and based on outstanding performance.

How to Apply:
Send us a resume, including at least 3 professional references we can contact, and a cover letter to birken law at g mail dot com. In your cover letter, share about a time at a previous role that showcases your approach to problem solving or applying critical thinking skills. How did you handle a challenging situation or complex problem? Be sure to put your favorite emoji in the subject line :)

Working parents and very experienced workers are encouraged to apply.

Please note that applications submitted through the website will not be considered.

Job Types: part time, contract (may grow to full time)

Annual Salary = ~ 416,000 PHP
Paid Time Off = ~ 42,000 PHP
13th Month = ~ 32,000 PHP
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Total Comp Pkg = ~ 490,000 PHP