The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) was formed in 1937 as the country’s first integrated national bar association. The NLG is dedicated to the need for basic change in the structure of our political and economic system. We seek to unite the lawyers, law students, legal workers and jailhouse lawyers to function as an effective force in the service of the people, to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests.

The Chicago Guild is hiring a part-time Director of Operations. We are looking for an organized and dedicated advocate who can support the Guild’s critical work providing legal support to Chicago’s social justice movements. The person who fills this position will be tasked with managing day-to-day operations and supporting continued capacity-building efforts alongside the efforts of NLG Chicago’s Board. Our ideal candidate would bring experience and enthusiasm for providing administrative and logistical support to projects and organizations, along with a deep knowledge of movement work in the Metro Chicago area, and current issues regarding state repression of Chicago’s contemporary social movements. Legal experience is not required for this position.

This position requires someone who is self-directed and can work independently; the Director of Operations will report directly to the Board of Directors.This position will be scheduled for 10 hours a week at $20.00/hour, with a $4.25 hourly health and wellness benefit, and will include 36 hours of paid sick leave  and 72 hours of paid time off each year. The Director of Operations position is covered under a Collective Bargaining Agreement with National Organization of Legal Services Workers, United Auto Workers Local 2320.

This position includes the following duties:

• Providing administrative and logistical support to members of the NLG Chicago Board, including scheduling Board meetings, logistically coordinating the annual election process, and coordinating Board input on day-to-day chapter decision making.
• Performing office administrative duties, including responding to phone calls, email, and receiving postal mail in the Guild Office (located in downtown Chicago)
• Coordinating and facilitating chapter wide events with the support of the NLG Chicago Board, including NLG Chicago’s annual fall fundraising dinner and spring May Day party
• Providing administrative support for Board efforts regarding fundraising and pursuing grant opportunities and coordinating finances and operations needs with the Board Treasurer
• Coordinating external promotions of Guild activities on the chapter website, email list, and social media
• Producing and publishing the quarterly Chapter Newsletter
• Supervising occasional office volunteers and interns
• Other duties as assigned

The position will begin as soon as possible and require 10 hours per week, with regular office hours and some flexibility depending on the Chapter activities each month. This position will be a hybrid position with some tasks needing to be completed in the NLG Office. Although most work can be completed remotely, in person tasks do require that the candidate’s residence is in the metro Chicago area. 

NLG Chicago is an equal opportunity employer and people from historically marginalized groups and people who have been directly impacted by the criminal legal system are encouraged to apply. 

To apply, please email a resume, cover letter (in the body of the email), and three references, to chicago@nlg.org, with the subject line “NLG Director of Operations Application.”Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until the position is filled. Interviews will be conducted via Zoom with members of the NLG Chicago Board.  Interviews will be held on a rolling basis until the position is filled. We will ask the Director of Operations to begin work as soon as possible. No phone calls please.

Faculty and graduate employee working conditions are student learning conditions, and the learning conditions at Chicago’s universities are miserable and unacceptable. 

National Lawyers Guild Chicago joins in solidarity with the members of UIC United Faculty, UChicago Graduate Students United, and Northwestern University Graduate Workers, who are demanding appropriate workloads, fair wages, academic freedom protections, and greater support for students and faculty, including greater access to mental health care. 

Each of these unions face significant struggles this month. UIC United Faculty voted to authorize a strike, with a tentative strike date of January 17, 2022. This comes after months of negotiation with administration lead to an impasse on critical bargaining demands, including wages and expanded mental health services for students and faculty. In addition, GSU graduate workers at University of Chicago organized with UE and Northwestern University graduate workers organized with UE are both preparing to vote for NLRB recognition of their unions due to their university’s refusal to grant voluntary recognition.

As a bar association rooted in a core belief that “human rights and the rights of the environment shall be held more sacred than property interests,” we have been proud to support students, staff, and faculty across Chicago’s universities throughout numerous organizing campaigns, to ensure the protection of their First Amendment rights to speech, association, expression, and petitioning the state for a redress of grievances. 

Our membership and Board includes students and alumni affiliated with all three of these universities. While law schools constantly tout their rankings and supposed “prestige,” mistreatment of faculty, graduate workers, and students can be found at every Chicago university–in every department and program. Our model of higher education is one of austerity, which requires students to pay unaffordable tuition and take out loans to obtain the degrees required for economic stability. This model can be traced back to Ronald Regan’s time as California Governor, where he deliberately gutted California’s public university system with the expressed purpose of quashing leftist student and faculty organizing movements.

Contemporary campus protests and organizing movements are possible due to the critical legal victories fought and won by student activists during the height of the Vietnam War, including Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169 (1972) and Papish v. Bd. of Curators of Univ. of Missouri, 410 U.S. 667 (1973). Students, graduate workers, and faculty continue to be at the forefront of struggles to prevent state repression in higher education. This is more critical than ever as even tenured faculty face sanctions for abolitionist and antiracist scholarship and advocacy, and multiple state legislatures seek to weaken or eliminate tenure, or criminalize the right to teach classes about systemic oppression in the United States.

All three of these local universities currently taking an adversarial position against faculty and graduate student workers use legal rhetoric to justify their refusal to bargain with union members or voluntarily recognize graduate worker unions. This is a blatant violation of their workers’ express rights to organize and collectively bargain for higher wages and better working conditions. University administrations take advantage of the fact that they will receive a slap on the wrist at worst for their flagrantly illegal conduct, and only after the significant delays caused by the inadequate funding and staffing for the NLRB. Law is not neutral, and just because American labor law is biased towards management doesn’t make that right or just. Any number of our members could share their “horror stories” about stressful experiences as students–experiences that are not in fact necessary to educate the skilled attorneys and legal workers that Chicago’s social justice movements need.

We recognize that the landscape of law school and higher education will not improve without solidarity between all faculty, graduate researchers, students, and staff.  United, we can challenge  inadequate wages, demanding hours, and relentless attacks on academic freedom.

For example, in the fall of 2020, UIC and UI Health workers affiliated with SEIU Local 73 and the Illinois Nurses Association went on strike for 7 days to demand higher pay, COVID-19 protections, and safe staffing ratios for workers and patients in the UI Health system. Striking workers were joined by UIC students, UICUF members, and members of UIC Graduate Employees Organization (GEO). Healthcare and university workers who had been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic won their demands due to this outpouring of solidarity, which included Teamsters Local 705 members refusing to deliver packages to UIC. 

The professions of law, healthcare, social services, and many other fields seek to divide workers from clients as a way to advance “professionalism.” This always comes at the expense of our clients receiving the time and quality of care that they deserve and negatively impacts the entire community as a result. 

When we work together and reject blatant austerity measures, we can win a better world for all faculty, graduate workers, students, and staff in Chicago and beyond.

In Solidarity, 

NLG Chicago Board

Elena Gormley, MSW, UIC Jane Addams College of Social Work, NLG Chicago Board Member
Mike Podgurski, JD, UIC Law, NLG Chicago Board Member
Andrew Segal, 3L, Northwestern University Law School, NLG Chicago Board Member
Dean Mayer, JD, Northwestern University Law School, NLG Chicago Board Member
Eli Massey, 2L, University of Michigan Law School, NLG Chicago Board Member
Sarah Ryan, JD, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, NLG Chicago Board Member

UIC Law NLG Chapter Board

Jacq Spreadbury, 3L, UIC Law, UIC NLG Board, NLG Chicago Legal Observer®? Program Coordinator
Rachel Sternic, 3L, UIC Law, UIC NLG Board Tony Wingfield, 3L, UIC Law, UIC NLG Board 
Jonathan Ballew, 3L, UIC Law, UIC NLG Board
Emily Cotner, 3L, UIC Law, UIC NLG Board 
Ashlyn Amador, 2L, UIC Law, UIC NLG Board

University of Chicago Law School NLG Chapter Board

Gabrielle Zook, 2L University of Chicago Law, UChicago Law NLG Board
Rebecca Marvin, 2L University of Chicago Law, UChicago Law NLG Board
Allison O’Connor, 2L University of Chicago Law, UChicago Law NLG Board
Isabelle Argueta, 2L University of Chicago Law, UChicago Law NLG Board
Juliana Steward, 2L University of Chicago Law, UChicago Law NLG Board

Northwestern University Law School NLG Chapter Board

Elaine Cleary, 3L, Co-president NLG Northwestern Law
Shawn Oh, 2L, Co-president NLG Northwestern Law

Chicago-Kent College of Law NLG Chapter Board

Devin Ross, 3L, Chicago-Kent, C-K NLG President
Kayla Farhang, 2L, Chicago-Kent, C-K NLG Vice President
Yasmin Yousif, 2L, Chicago-Kent, C-K NLG Secretary
Ben Ginzky, 3L, Chicago-Kent, C-K NLG Events Chair
Jake Marshall, 2L, Chicago-Kent, C-K NLG-Chicago Liaison
Emma Byrne, 2L, Chicago-Kent, C-K NLG Chicago Area School Liaison

Loyola University Chicago Law School NLG Chapter Board

Kelly Barrett 3L, LUC Law School NLG Board
Agrismary Santiago 2L, LUC Law School NLG Board
Casey Callahan 2L, LUC Law School NLG Board
Juan Gonzalez-Martinez 3L, LUC Law School NLG Board
Jasmine Anderson 3L, LUC Law School NLG Board
Charlene Echeverria Burciaga 3L, LUC Law School NLG Board

DePaul University Law School NLG Chapter Board

Sarah Pitre, 2L, DePaul Law School NLG Board President
Arjun Nair, 3L DePaul Law School NLG Board Vice-President
James Fleming, 2L, DePaul Law School NLG Board Treasurer 

NLG Chicago is so excited to announce that we are gearing up for the National Lawyers Guild’s annual DisOrientation! It will take place over the weekend of October 1^st and 2^nd, and will consist of online panels, zoom trainings and two in person social events including a happy hour and a coffee hang. The NLG boards of all the Chicago-area law schools have been working hard to make this happen, and we are so excited to share it with you. 

Register HERE & we will send you the necessary zoom links via email prior to the event. 

We’re excited to announce that our annual celebration on Sept 17 at Haymarket House will feature Sarah Davila A, lead author of a comprehensive collaborative report by UIC Law School International Human Rights Clinic, NLG Chicago, and Good Kids Mad City documented human rights abuses by Chicago police during the uprisings in summer 2020.

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Sarah Dávila A. is an Assistant Professor of Law & Co-Founder and Director of the International Human Rights Clinic at UIC Law. She teaches International Human Rights, Transitional Justice, and lectures on international topics as part of her clinical teaching.

Prior to working at UIC Law, Sarah Dávila was an adjunct lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where she taught international law, international human rights, transitional justice, human rights in the U.S., and criminal law. She also worked as a pro bono attorney with the Institute for Justice & Democracy (IJDH) in Haiti, where she focused on issues relating to the displacement of Haitians in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, the Duvalier prosecution, and sexual violence. Prior to her work with IJDH, she was a litigator at CAMBA Legal Services, an organization in New York City. 

She has experience in the domestic and international litigation of human rights cases and has engaged in impact advocacy at the United Nations. She has also been instrumental in the Clinic’s work on behalf of Haitian cholera victims suing the United Nations, immigrant detention conditions and solitary confinement, Inter-American litigation, human trafficking of Puerto Rican victims, Human Rights for Syrians Initiative, Privacy and Human Rights Project, and most recently the Environmental Human Rights Project.