The Seattle City Attorney’s Office is looking for a paralegal to join its team in the Contracts and Utilities Section. This position supports multiple attorneys who handle litigation, transactional, regulatory, and advisory matters.  The Contracts and Utilities Section takes a collaborative, team-oriented approach to advice and litigation work, seeking to build effective and lasting relationships with City departments and their leadership. The Section’s paralegals are critical to this philosophy and are valued members of our enthusiastic and experienced team.

Attorneys in the Contracts and Utilities Section advise and work with City clients on business transactions such as intergovernmental agreements, bond issuances, grant acceptances, real estate transactions, and capital construction projects, as well as on related construction claims and litigation.  The Section provides advice on contracts for all City departments, including agreements that are maintained by other City departments in a standardized form, as well as non-standardized contracts for complex transactions such as capital projects for multi-million dollar construction, wholesale water and energy agreements, and information technology contracts. The Section further provides general counsel services to the City’s electric, water, wastewater and solid waste utilities and is an active part of the City’s municipal finance team.  The successful applicant will have direct contact with City department clients and will act as an important resource to the City’s legal team.

In addition to this opportunity to join a team that is dedicated to public service, the City Attorney’s Office offers a generous benefit program which includes paid leave benefits, paid parental and family leave, low cost health benefits, and the opportunity to participate in a defined benefit retirement program.

Job Responsibilities

Paralegals in the Civil Division serve a crucial role in providing support to attorneys. They apply their knowledge of legal terminology, legal and regulatory procedures, editing and proper formatting of documents, electronic filing systems, and general office practices. As the City Attorney’s Office is increasingly relying on electronic storage and filing, our paralegals use a variety of technological resources.

Duties include, but are not limited to:
•    Word processing, including proofreading and editing
•    Researching case law and statutes and drafting memoranda to assist attorneys
•    Providing litigation support, including support in drafting and responding to discovery requests, managing document production, and preparing, filing, and serving court documents
•    Using a variety of applications for litigation support, including discovery and litigation holds
•    Developing organizational system improvements
•    Learning and using new databases and software applications
•    Preparing real estate documents for recording, searching for documents in online databases such as Seattle City Clerk’s files and King County Recorder’s Office

Qualifications

The successful candidate will have the demonstrated abilities to perform the above described job responsibilities. This includes but is not limited to all or a combination of the following:

•    Effective research and writing skills
•    Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, and able to work collaboratively with other team members
•    Ability to work on multiple projects simultaneously under tight deadlines with great attention to detail
•    Represent the City Attorney’s Office with City employees and outside contacts
•    Experience with a variety of software packages for litigation support, calendaring, and email-archiving
•    Experience with litigation holds, discovery, including scheduling and coordinating multiple party depositions, meetings, and hearings; and court calendaring practices, court e-filing programs, and court rules
•    Organize and place structure around large amounts of documents utilizing electronic litigation data management systems such as Nuix Discover (formerly Ringtail)
•    Familiarity with real estate documents and recordings

Additionally, the City Attorney’s Office is committed to integrating the City of Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative into both the work provided to clients as well as within the organization. The person hired will be an active participant in these efforts.

This position requires two years of post-secondary course work in paralegal or business skills and one year of litigation support work demonstrating familiarity with legal form, terminology, and documents (or a combination of equivalent education, training and/or experience).