Orleans Public Defenders Seeks Summer Interns To Start Immediately
Summer Intern s will help lead the office’s efforts to develop a fully integrated Pre-Trial Services Division which provides a broad range of administrative, paralegal and social services to clients and attorneys to support advocacy efforts throughout the case, from arrest to community reentry.
The work of each Summer Intern, and of the Pre-Trial Services Division as a whole, will be fully integrated into the office's structure of attorney supervisory groups (or teams). Our Trial Division is now organized into felony and misdemeanor attorney teams, with each team picking up new cases on a rotating basis and sharing section coverage duties under the guidance of a Supervising Attorney. Each team has one full-time staff member who serves as the team's Pre-Trial Services Coordinator. Summer Intern s will be assigned to a Pre-Trial Services Coordinator and work with that Coordinator's group of attorneys. This will enable each Summer Intern to develop meaningful professional relationships with a group of 10 to 20 attorneys at various practice levels.
Summer Interns will assist their Pre-Trial Services Coordinator with both Client Intake and Client Follow-Up work. These two functions are intimately linked, as follow-up work flows naturally from the intake screening process.
For each intake session, the Coordinator/Intern must complete the following tasks for each client coming through court that day:
- Inform each conditionally assigned attorney of their conditional assignment so that they may visit their new client and advocate on their behalf at the bail hearing;
- Generate a case folder;
- Obtain the relevant police paperwork;
- Determine and summarize local prior criminal history;
- Analyze the police report for probable cause arguments;
- Conduct an in-depth initial intake interview with recently arrested clients to determine indigency, obtain relevant contact information and signed releases, develop bail arguments and screen for possible follow-up work;
- Help clients understand basic information about relevant court, jail, and law enforcement procedures;
- Assist attorneys in developing bail modification strategies;
- Screen for follow-up flags, including language access or immigration issues, physical or mental health conditions, evidence preservation and/or rapid response investigation opportunities, and possible pretrial release strategies;
- Coordinate translation services for clients with language access issues;
- Determine and certify indigency;
- File a certification of indigency and notice of enrollment with the court;
- Follow-up with family and friends regarding pretrial release strategies;
- Prepare an intake memo summarizing the intake interview and suggesting possible follow-up Pre-Trial Services;
- Deliver the case folder to the newly-assigned public defender; and
- Brief the newly-assigned public defender on possible follow-up Pre-Trial Services.
Note that intake work takes place on every day of the week; thus, intake work sometimes takes place on the weekend. Also, initial intake interviews are currently conducted in court during First Appearance proceedings, which are generally scheduled for 10am, 3pm and 8pm each workday (and 10am and 5pm on weekends and holidays.) Pre-Trial Services Coordinators, as full-time staff, are expected to handle all intake work, including regular evening and weekend shifts. Thus, this Summer Internship offers great flexibility. Interns can work mornings, afternoons, and/or evenings, weekdays or weekends.
Client Follow-up refers to a large and growing menu of administrative, paralegal and social services that (1) significantly strengthen attorneys' advocacy efforts; yet (2) do not require any advanced professional training or accreditation. These services include, but are not limited to:
- Bail Exhaustion services: working with family and friends in an effort to bond out the client;
- Property Release services: securing the release of the physical property seized from clients upon arrest (wallets, IDs, cell phones, etc...), often as part of bail exhaustion services;
- Money Release services: securing the release of the funds in a client's commissary account, often as part of bail exhaustion services;
- Hold Analysis services: communicating with relevant court and law enforcement officials to determine the details of each custody hold placed on a client and what steps, if any, could be taken to get the hold lifted;
- Bail Modification services: obtaining relevant information from clients regarding employment, education, military, family, financial, and medical status, to help attorneys prepare successful bail modification strategies;
- EMP Facilitation services: helping clients successfully apply for and enter the Electronic Monitoring Program (EMP), i.e. monitored house arrest, as an alternative to pretrial detention;
- VC Facilitation services: helping clients who have served in the armed forces successfully apply for and enter Judge Hunter's Veteran's Court (VC);
- DC Facilitation services: helping those clients assigned to Drug Court (DC) understand and comply with its requirements;
- DVMC Facilitation services: helping those clients assigned to Domestic Violent Monitoring Court (DVMC) understand and comply with its requirements;
- Evidence Preservation services: documenting clients' injuries as soon as possible, so as to maintain their evidentiary value for possible subsequent use at trial;
- Rapid Response Investigation services: obtaining relevant information from clients regarding potentially helpful witnesses to speak with, locations to visit, communications to review, and/or objects to inspect, and helping attorney prepare investigation request memos;
- Custody Mitigation services: helping client deal with outside responsibilities - children, jobs, rent, bills, vehicle, pets, etc. - while on the inside; helping clients get into GED classes while in jail;
- Medical Advocacy services: coordinating with jail medical staff to ensure clients receive appropriate medical care while in custody;
- Record Compilation services: helping attorneys to identify, request, obtain, compile, and summarize relevant employment, education, medical, court, and other official records;
- Expungement services: helping clients fill out relevant paperwork for the expungement process;
- Sex Offender Compliance services: helping those clients who must register as sex offenders to comply with the residential, financial, notification and other requirements imposed upon them;
- Jail Hotline services: accepting collect calls from clients in jail, appropriately addressing and/or directing their questions and concerns, updating the appropriate attorney and/or supervisor on each call, and taking any necessary follow-up steps;
- Walk-in services: assisting clients, family and friends who visit our office to provide or obtain information;
- Visitation services: helping attorneys and family visit clients in jail and conducting jail visits with clients on behalf of attorneys and family;
- Placement services: helpings clients identify, apply for, and get into shelters, outpatient or inpatient medical, mental health, or rehabilitation facilities, or other appropriate placements as alternatives to detention in the pretrial, sentencing or probation revocation contexts;
- Referral services: referring clients to other agencies which provide housing, emergency shelter, civil representation, rehabilitation, medical, mental health, pharmacy, education, training, employment or other services;
- Probation Revocation services: obtaining relevant information from clients facing the risk of probation revocation to help attorneys prepare for their probation revocation hearings;
- Prisoner Reentry services: helping clients make a successful transition from custody to community, often including referral, expungement and other services.
This list is not exhaustive, and we are actively developing new Pre-Trial Services for clients and their attorneys.
When a public defender requests Pre-Trial Services, often in response to a client intake memo, Summer Interns will work directly with clients and attorneys to provide these services.
Each Summer Intern will undergo extensive training on each support service, and related skills and issues, with Benjamin Plener and other OPD staff. Summer Intern s are expected to commit to either 25 hours per week as a part-time Intern, or 40 hours per week plus 10% on evenings/weekends as a full-time Intern.
Summer internships have 2 possible start dates:
- Monday, May 23
- Monday, June 6
The difference between full-time and part-time interns is more than simply the number of hours per week. Part-time interns will focus primarily on first appearances and immediate bond advocacy, whereas full-time interns will do some different and more sustained follow-up work. Full-time interns, in addition to their responsibilities with intake and follow-up, may be asked to take on an individual issue which they would focus on learning about and improving/expanding our services in that area.
In addition to both intake and follow-up work with individual clients, the Summer Intern will help develop and consolidate the work of the Pre-Trial Services Division into a sustainable and permanent feature of OPD’s institutional structure. This institutional development work may include:
- Developing protocols, practices and procedures for the efficient delivery of high-quality Support Services;
- Recruiting, training, supervising, scheduling, evaluating and coordinating local student and community volunteers and Interns;
- Developing and revising materials, including training manuals, memoranda templates, and intake and indigency forms;
- Documenting and evaluating the work of the Pre-Trial Services Division, including but not limited to providing regular reports on attorney assignments, bail exhaustion efficacy, and successful re-entry (in terms of acceptance to agencies, completion of programs, etc.);
- Assisting with long-term strategic planning.
Summer Interns will begin their work at Pre-Trial Services within OPD under the training and supervision of Benjamin Plener.
Preferred but not required -
- Fluency in Spanish, Vietnamese, Portuguese, and/or American Sign Language;
- Tech savvy and/or computer programming skills/background;
- Administrative and/or criminal justice experience;
- Familiarity with New Orleans.
Required -
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills;
- The highest degree of professionalism, dedication, work ethic, and commitment to our clients and the mission of our office;
- Flexibility and ability to learn quickly in real-time;
- Creativity, ingenuity, initiative and the ability to work independently;
- The ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high-stakes, high-pressure, hyper-volume, resource-starved environment!
Candidates interested in applying for the Summer Internship position must send the following materials to
And
.
- Resume
- Statement of Interest
- Schedule of Availability (including preferred start date and, if applicable, end date)
- 2-3 References (name and contact info required, letters optional)
*Unfortunately, we are unable to accept applications from people currently in law school for the Pre-Trial Services Summer Internship. Any law students interested in internship opportunities over the summer should apply to the Summer Law Clerk program.
back to top
|
Orleans Public Defenders seek enthusiastic applicants for unpaid Language Access Corps (LAC) Drop-In Internship
The Orleans Public Defenders (“OPD”) is a public defender office representing indigent individuals charged with municipal, misdemeanor and felony offenses in Orleans Parish. Some of our clients find themselves in the particularly difficult situation of being involved in a criminal justice system that operates in a language they don’t speak fluently - or at all. Sizable portions of New Orleans’ population communicate most effectively in languages other than English, especially Spanish, Vietnamese, Portuguese, and American Sign Language.
To better serve these client populations, OPD has launched a new unpaid Language Access Corps (LAC) Drop-In Internship. Each LAC Drop-In Intern will choose one or more sessions per week when they will be at the office and available to help provide language access services such as:
- conducting intake interviews for clients at First Appearances where bonds are set;
- conducting drop-in interviews of people who come into our office, whether as witnesses, family members, friends, or clients themselves;
- providing interpretation services for attorneys in court;
- providing interpretation services for investigators, both at the office and in the field;
- conducting jail visits with clients to collect information for OPD staff;
- translating correspondence, educational materials, or legal documents.
Each LAC Drop-In Intern, based at the Public Defenders’ Office during their weekly shift(s) to facilitate on-call availability, will work on projects in three different ways:
- Ad-hoc LAC help – Each LAC Drop-In Intern will be available to provide language access services for any situations that arise during the Intern’s shift at the office. The LAC Drop-In Intern will service a hotline that will allow OPD staff to request language access services in real-time;
- Pending LAC help – Each LAC Drop-In Interns will be expected to pick up any language access projects requested when no LAC Drop-In Intern was present to handle the situation;
- Coordinated LAC help – Prior to any shift, each LAC Drop-In Intern will be available to OPD staff to coordinate and schedule language access help that they will provide OPD staff during their assigned shift. Coordinated LAC help will take priority over pending or ad-hoc LAC help.
Each LAC Drop-In Intern must abide by OPD’s confidentiality policy and act at all times in the best interest of OPD’s clients.
The services provided by dedicated, compassionate, and capable volunteers are essential to OPD's mission of helping arrested persons understand the legal process and helping family and friends assist clients during this vulnerable time in their lives.
Available Shifts
Monday through Friday: 7AM-11AM, 1PM-6PM, 7PM-10PM
Weekends (on-call for field investigations or court interviews): 8AM-12PM, 3PM-7PM
Required
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills;
- Fluency in Spanish, Vietnamese, Portuguese, and/or American Sign Language;
- The highest degree of professionalism, dedication, work ethic, and commitment to our clients and the mission of our office;
- Flexibility and ability to learn quickly in real-time;
- Creativity, ingenuity, initiative and the ability to work independently;
- The ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high-stakes, high-pressure, hyper-volume, resource-starved environment!
Application Process
Candidates interested in applying for the LAC Drop-In Internship position must send the following materials to
- Resume
- Statement of Interest
- Schedule of Availability
- 2-3 References (name and contact info required, letters optional)
- Detailed description of your language skills, including level of fluency, prior experience with language access work, and number of years you have spoken/studied the language.
|