Legal Secretary I - Dependency & Mental Health Team - City Attorney's Office (1458)

The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office is looking for a qualified and motivated legal secretary to join its Dependency & Mental Health Team.

Appointment Type: Temporary Provisional (TPV), limited to no more than 3 years in duration. This temporary position is excluded by the Charter from the competitive Civil Service examination process, is considered "at will" and shall serve at the discretion of the Department Head. This position will be subject to the Permanent Civil Service examination process. Successful participation in the Permanent Civil Service examination and selection through an open competitive process is needed in order to be considered for the permanent appointment.

• Application Opening: March 11, 2025
• Application Deadline: Continuous, earliest close 5:00 p.m. Tuesday, March 25, 2025
• Compensation Range: $92,508 - $112,424
• Recruitment ID: RTF0155623-01054424

About the Office
The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office is an innovative, nationally-recognized municipal law office working to protect and advance the rights and interests of the City and County of San Francisco and its residents. With over 300 talented and dedicated employees, the Office provides exceptional legal services to the City’s Mayor, Board of Supervisors, officials, and departments. Our work empowers City leaders with effective, responsive, and creative legal solutions and representation so they can deliver critical public services, and our affirmative advocacy enhances the lives and wellbeing of San Francisco’s residents and visitors.

The Office recognizes that diversity in the backgrounds, identities, ideas, and lived experiences of our employees enriches our workplace and enhances our work. We aspire to recruit, employ, retain, and promote talented individuals representing the full spectrum of our community, and welcome all candidates, including candidates of any race, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, and age, and candidates with disabilities. We have a clear vision: to be the place where a diverse mix of people want to come and stay, grow professionally, and find purpose and engagement, and where all employees feel welcomed and respected for their full authentic selves, and valued for their work and contributions to the Office and the City. To learn more about the Office’s efforts to provide an inclusive workplace where employees feel they belong and can meaningfully contribute, please visit: https://www.sfcityattorney.org/aboutus/dei/

Currently, the Office offers a hybrid remote work schedule for eligible employees, with three days onsite and up to two days remote.

To learn more about the City Attorney’s Office please visit: https://www.sfcityattorney.org/

About the Dependency and Mental Health Team
The DMH Team is a collaborative and dynamic group of fourteen 14 attorneys, two paralegals, one legal assistant and two legal secretaries. DMH is a litigation team that handles two confidential court-based practices with heavy and active caseloads: Child Welfare/Dependency and Conservatorships. DMH works with protective services workers to represent the interests of abused and neglected children in San Francisco. Attorneys advise the Family and Children Services Division of the Human Services Agency in all phases of dependency litigation. DMH also advises the Public Conservator (PC) and represents them in court proceedings on Lanterman Petris Short (LPS) conservatorships. DMH serves as advice counsel, as well as litigation counsel, on more than 600 conservatorship cases in San Francisco.

Position Information and Responsibilities
Legal secretaries work under the direction of attorneys and provide a variety of secretarial and clerical duties in high volume, fast-paced litigation. Keen attention to detail is required. The responsibilities listed below are representative of the range of duties assigned and are not intended as an exhaustive list. 

• Ensures compliance with the court orders regarding discovery provided to adverse attorneys – typically three per case in nearly 800 dependency cases. Coordinates with agency client and vendor to ensure document productions. Verifies vendor invoices are accurate. Organizes and maintains a spreadsheet to ensure requests/orders are provided in a timely fashion and communicates with individual protective services workers to provide notice of discovery production orders.

• Handles opening, closing, and calendaring of cases in calendaring program.  Ensures court notes from every court hearing are maintained in document management system.

• Communicates with agency clients and gathers necessary court reports/documents/calendars for all court hearings.

• Receives/retrieves all filed documents from court and scans and renames per the Team’s naming convention. Maintains electronic case files. Coordinates with the agency client’s Court Office ensuring sharing of all court documents.

• Receives all interview and warrant requests (approximately 60 warrant requests per month) from the agency client. Identifies assigned attorney to handle request. Formats shells for the declarations and drafts the warrant portion. Communicates with the protective services worker to ensure necessary information is received in support of the request. Proof-reads declarations and obtains necessary signature to submit to the court. Monitors warrant request until court has approved it and provides the approved documents to the agency client and assigned attorney.

• Formats and proof-reads appeals for dependency and mental health cases. Marks and creates Tables of Authorities and Contents. Prepares POS and serves all parties (e.g., via TrueFiling, electronic mail, and regular mail). Monitors the Team’s appellate website for all correspondences, includes downloading and cataloging all appellate filings and monitoring deadlines by organizing and maintaining a detailed spreadsheet. If necessary, drafts simple motions (e.g., Motions to Augment and Extensions of Time). 

• Opens and appropriately distributes all mail.

Minimum Qualifications

Experience: Two (2) years of verifiable experience as a legal secretary transcribing dictation and typing legal documents including petitions, motions, briefs, complaints and other legal forms
AND
The ability to type 55 net WPM

Substitution: A certificate of completion in legal secretarial skills from a recognized college, university, or training program, which involved learning legal terminology and legal formats and forms, may substitute for six (6) months of the required legal secretarial experience. Proof of satisfactory completion must be submitted at the time of filing.

One year of full-time employment is equivalent to 2000 hours. (2000 hours of qualifying work experience is based on a 40-hour work week.) Any overtime hours that you work above forty (40) hours per week are not included in the calculation to determine full-time employment.

Desired Qualifications

• Excellent verbal and writing skills, and an ability to work independently, as well as collaboratively across multiple legal teams.
• Ability to handle multiple tasks and deadlines and accept and implement written and oral instructions.
• Communicate effectively and tactfully with attorneys, office personnel, court personnel, vendors, City personnel, and the general public.
• Working knowledge of civil litigation procedures, legal terminology, and court rules.
• Adept in Microsoft Office Suite, with a focus on Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word.
• Experience with Adobe Professional, Cisco WebEx, Microsoft Teams.
• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university.
• Commitment to valuing diversity and contributing to an inclusive working and learning environment.

Salary and Benefits
The position has a five-step salary scale ranging from $92,508-$112,424. The successful applicant is appointed to a salary step based on years of experience and additional relevant degrees, certifications, credentials, or skills. The City offers robust health, retirement, and other benefits. For more information, please visit: https://sfdhr.org/benefits-overview. Legal Secretaries are represented by the Service Employees International Union, Local 1021.

Verification
Applicants may be required to submit verification of qualifying education and experience at any point during the recruitment and selection process. If education verification is required, information on how to verify education requirements, including verifying foreign education credits or degree equivalency, can be found at https://sfdhr.org/how-verify-education-requirements.

Note: Falsifying one’s education, training, or work experience or attempted deception on the application may result in disqualification for this and future job opportunities with the City and County of San Francisco.

All work experience, education, training and other information substantiating how you meet the minimum qualifications must be included on your application by the filing deadline. Information submitted after the filing deadline will not be considered in determining whether you meet the minimum qualifications.

Resumes will not be accepted in lieu of a completed City and County of San Francisco application.

Applications completed improperly may be cause for ineligibility, disqualification or may lead to lower scores.

Selection Procedures
The selection process will include evaluation of applications in relation to minimum requirements. Applicants meeting the minimum qualifications are not guaranteed advancement to the interview. Depending on the number of applicants, the Department may establish and implement additional screening mechanisms to comparatively evaluate the qualifications of candidates. If this becomes necessary, only those applicants whose qualifications most closely meet the needs of the Department will be invited to participate in the next stage of the selection process.

Additional Information Regarding Employment with the City and County of San Francisco:

• Information About the Hiring Process
• Conviction History
• Employee Benefits Overview  
• Equal Employment Opportunity 
• ADA Accommodation

HOW TO APPLY

Applications for City and County of San Francisco jobs are only accepted through an online process. Visit https://careers.sf.gov/ and begin the application process.

• Select the “Apply Now” button and follow instructions on the screen

Applicants may be contacted by email about this recruitment and, therefore, it is their responsibility to ensure that their registered email address is accurate and kept up-to-date. Also, applicants must ensure that email from CCSF is not blocked on their computer by a spam filter. To prevent blocking, applicants should set up their email to accept CCSF mail from the following addresses (@sfgov.org, @sfdpw.org, @sfport.com, @flysfo.com, @sfwater.org, @sfdph.org, @asianart.org, @sfmta.com, @sfpl.org, @dcyf.org, @first5sf.org, @famsf.org, @ccsf.edu, @smartalerts.info, and @smartrecruiters.com).

Applicants will receive a confirmation email that their online application has been received in response to every announcement for which they file. Applicants should retain this confirmation email for their records. Failure to receive this email means that the online application was not submitted or received.

Human Resources Analyst Information: If you have any questions regarding this recruitment or application process, please send your inquires to Asa Nojd, Human Resources Analyst, at [email protected].

The City and County of San Francisco encourages women, minorities and persons with disabilities to apply. Applicants will be considered regardless of their sex, race, age, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition (associated with cancer, a history of cancer, or genetic characteristics), HIV/AIDS status, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, military and veteran status, or other protected category under the law.