Position Title: Legal Committee Paralegal
Organization Name: Organization for Transformative Works
Committee: Legal
Reports To: Legal Committee Chair
Time Requirements: Varies; usually under 2 hours/week but can have periods of intense activity
Term: 1+ years
Role Overview: The Legal Committee has both outward-facing and inward-facing responsibilities. The paralegal role will focus on (1) keeping track of legal work, (2) answering standard queries with standard language, including orphan works takedown requests, and (3) routing non-standard questions to appropriate Chairs or team members.
Committee Overview:
- Outward-facing: The Legal Committee’s role includes both advocacy and education. For example, Legal members provide general assistance and information in response to outside inquiries from fans, including inquiries about fair use and responding to take-down notices; and provide general information in response to inquiries from the press; and informational and educational content regarding legal developments that may impact fandom. The Legal Committee’s advocacy role also includes writing legal briefs and participating in lawmaking activities such as writing formal submissions to lawmaking bodies and testifying before lawmakers.
- Inward-facing: The Legal Committee is responsible for giving confidential advice within the organization on a wide variety of legal topics. This includes assisting AO3 Policy & Abuse, AO3 Support, and Fanlore to resolve user issues; assisting the Board and Volunteers & Recruiting Committee with issues of personnel law; assisting the Board, Finance Committee, and other committees and workgroups with issues regarding organizational governance and nonprofit law; and assisting Open Doors, Systems, and other committees and workgroups with legal aspects of their planning.
Key Responsibilities:
- Participate in discussions (mainly via email)
- Track unanswered issues and due dates for filings
- Where there is a recurring question (e.g., how do I remove my orphaned work that I now no longer want to be orphaned), tweak and provide responses to that question from inside and outside the organization
- Work on cite checking/proofreading for occasional larger-scale projects such as our DMCA work; Wikipedia project; brief writing; testimony writing; creation of educational material; training plan for org volunteers; etc.
- Proactively bring potential issues to the whole committee’s attention
- Welcome questions so that people within the organization recognize that Legal would always rather be asked than not asked, and concomitantly respond as quickly as possible so that work is not hindered
Experience:
- Legal or paralegal experience is required. Most work is US-based, but we are interested in increasing our non-US knowledge.
- Law students with paralegal experience or other relevant work experience will be considered, but this is not a legal internship and we cannot provide the close supervision necessary for a legal internship.
Skills and Attributes:
- Excellent communication skills, including ability to communicate legal issues to nonlawyers
- Ability to keep track of details and schedules and willingness to prod other committee members to act
- Ability and willingness to maintain confidentiality and legal privilege
- Responsiveness to inquiries
Training Requirements:
- Be open to mentoring, coaching, and/or instructing other committee members and/or volunteers on other committees in specific areas of the law if requested or needed
- Be open to being mentored or coached if other members have knowledge or experience to share