Founded in 1863, Boston College is a Jesuit, Catholic university located six miles from downtown Boston with an enrollment of 9,484 full-time undergraduates and 5,250 graduate and professional students. Ranked 35 among national universities, Boston College has 888 full-time and 1,281 FTE faculty, 2,711 non-faculty employees, an operating budget of $1.4 billion, and an endowment in excess of $3.5 billion.

The mission of the Initiative on Land, Housing & PropertyRights (the Initiative) is to address real property issues that impact poor anddisadvantaged communities. Many of the activities the Initiative undertakesassist disadvantaged communities that have been harmed as a result of lackingadequate land and housing rights. The Initiative's core activities includetraining law students and other students to develop legal and other technicalexpertise that can be used by these students when they are in school and afterthey graduate to help disadvantaged people and communities address their landand housing issues; catalyzing both theoretical and applied, policy-relevantresearch on various land and housing issues that have been understudied andundertheorized; proactively working to develop legal reform and policysolutions to address property problems disadvantaged communities experience;and sponsoring both continuing legal education programs for lawyers andcommunity legal education and other outreach programs for disadvantagedcommunities. The Initiative hopes to collaborate with other stakeholders in atrue spirit of partnership to more effectively address land and housing issuesthat disadvantaged communities experience, specifically communities that are disproportionatelythough not exclusively communities of color.

Position Summary

The Estate Planning Fellow for the Initiative will report toProfessor Thomas W. Mitchell, who serves as the Director of the Initiative aswell as to the Senior Associate Director of Operations once that staff personis hired and comes onboard. The Fellow also will work quite closely and in acollaborative way with the Special Projects Manager, David Price, theInitiative's point person for the Harvard University-funded project describedbelow.

The Estate Planning Fellow will play a leading role in theInitiative's work under the Homeownership Estate Planning Project (theProject) funded by the Reparative Partnership Grant Program of the Harvard andthe Legacy of Slavery (H&LS) Initiative. The Project will provide disadvantagedhomeowners and homebuyers in Boston and Cambridge, and elsewhere inMassachusetts over time, with estate planning classes combined with legalassistance to create estate plans. This work addresses a critical cause of thewidening of the racial wealth gap: the loss of homeownership due to theinstability of owning a home as heirs' property. Heirs' property often iscreated when an ancestor dies without a will or other estate plan and familymembers own property collectively as tenants in common, a very unstable andotherwise problematic form of ownership. It also can come into existence when aproperty owner dies with a simple will that replicates what would occur if theydied without some type of estate plan in place. According to one study, 24% ofBlack adults and 19% of Latino adults have a will compared to 64% of whiteadults.

Duties include:

Project Management (10%)

• Convene regular meetings of partners to review the work plan, agree on action items with assignments to individuals, track the progress of the Project, identify any problems in meeting the startup or implementation timeline and goals, and ensure that solutions are generated quickly. The Project coordination meetings will be more frequent during the initial months of the grant period.
• Communicate with the H&LS funding team including submission of required reports.
• Network with some other estate planning and homeowner counseling initiatives in the United States - governmental, nonprofit, and for profit - that are designed to help disadvantaged people to help ensure the Initiative's work under the Harvard grant is performed consistent with best practices and to the highest level possible.
• Document results of the Project including: numbers and demographics of participants completing estate planning classes, results of participant surveys, views of online legal resources, the Project's curriculum planning process, and proposals for adoption of the curriculum by others.
• Promote internship and externship opportunities for law students to help develop a pipeline of prospective estate planning and public interest attorneys and future pro bono law firm volunteers.
  
  

Communications and Marketing to TargetCommunities (15%)

• Conduct startup and ongoing communications with community stakeholders using information meetings, marketing presentations, tabling, speaking at various gatherings as an invited speaker or otherwise, stakeholder networking, and other methods.
• Develop an online state-specific legal toolkit intended to be a permanent resource about heirs' property and estate planning for homebuyers, homeowners, and homeownership education instructors and counselors.
• Share with stakeholders and the public the goals, services, process, and results of the Project using presentations, press releases, blog posts, social media, compelling stories of program participants, annual reports, and a final program assessment.
  
  

Curriculum Design, Adoption, Implementation,Scaling (30%)

• Lead the development of two estate planning curricula, one for prepurchase and one for postpurchase, working closely with partners including the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance (MAHA) and the Massachusetts Homeownership Collaborative (MHC).
• Scale the impact of the estate planning education curricula through advocating for adoption by statewide, regional, and national homeownership counseling stakeholders such as the MHC, NeighborWorks America, and HUD.
  Provide instruction at prepurchase homebuyer classes and postpurchase homeowner classes organized by MAHA and others.
  
  

Client Legal Services (30%)

• Help develop screening criteria with MAHA and the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School (LSC) to determine eligibility to receive estate planning services through the LSC.
• Help screen and refer homeowners to the LSC for estate planning legal services.
• Assist with intake at the LSC.
• Provide estate planning legal services to clients leading to the creation of completed estate plans, including initial interview, document and information collection, drafting, client review, execution, and any filing or recording.
  
  

Program Sustainability (10%)

• Design an estate planning survey capturing baseline information on the extent of homeowners' and homebuyers' awareness of the need for estate planning, relationships with attorneys, estate planning readiness, and any estate plan created, to be delivered on an ongoing basis to 1,000 class participants and others over two years, working closely with MAHA in identifying and reaching targeted survey participants.
• Using data from completed surveys and other research, create a report assessing the need for accessible estate planning and legal services among disadvantaged communities in Massachusetts, including an assessment of the best time to ask homeowners to consider developing an estate plan and an assessment of the type of individual or collective ownership different community members prefer.

Administrative Responsibilities (5%)

• Coordinate with the Initiative's administrative assistant to identify how the administrative assistant's role connects with any responsibilities above, for example, communicating internship and externship information to students.
• Refer potential, relevant grant or other funding opportunities to the Initiative's Director and Senior Associate Director of Operations.
• Assist with other work of the Initiative as requested.

Massachusetts bar license within three months of start.

Education

• Bachelor's degree required

• J.D. law degree required with some training in estate planning

Experience

• Proven research, writing, and oral communication skills
• Managing multiple, complex, and ongoing projects
• Working independently as well as work as part of a team
• Proven commitment to social justice
• Preferably some legal experience working on actual estate planning matters

Capacities

• Patience, empathy, and knowing how to talk to other people
• Ability to communicate clearly and set clear expectations
• Ability to hear feedback and adjust accordingly to solve challenges
• Cultural competency, defined as knowledge of and familiarity with disadvantaged communities impacted historically by institutional racism

Exceptional Work Schedule Demands

• Occasional evening and weekend work required.
  
  

University Core Competencies

Teamwork, Decision Making/Problem Solving, Communication, ValuingDiversity, Big Picture Perspective, Openness to Change, Productivity,Entrepreneurial Spirit

Functional and Technical Competencies

• Demonstrated problem-solving and critical thinking skills
• Capable user of standard office applications such as email, and Microsoft Office (PowerPoint, Excel, Word). More generally, strong Internet skills needed.
• Effective interpersonal and communication skills - in person, on the phone, and online, including social media
• Excellent writer of different types of written communications (email, letters, reports, memos, social media posts, and others)
• Thinks creatively and can work independently