Recruit

UCLA School of Law invites applications for a full-time position as an Assistant Teaching Professor/Teaching Professor of Law to Direct a new Housing Justice Clinic. This is a full-time faculty position with security of employment or potential for security of employment to begin on July 1, 2025.

For this new clinical faculty position, UCLA School of Law seeks a visionary and highly motivated individual with significant legal practice experience to develop and direct a new Housing Justice Clinic in downtown Los Angeles. The Clinic will be housed in UCLA’s recently acquired property, the historic Trust Building in downtown Los Angeles. The downtown location will enable the Clinic to serve clients in an accessible place, in proximity to underserved neighborhoods, courts, and to community partners engaged in housing justice work. The Clinic will have at its core representation of low-income tenants and tenants’ collectives, in housing-related cases including but not limited to eviction proceedings. Its provision of direct legal services will be shaped by an equally core commitment to systemic reform. To further these dual goals – of individual and community-level justice – the clinic will select its clients strategically, through partnerships with community-based organizations advocating for systemic change.

The Clinic Director will design the new Housing Justice Clinic in close consultation with faculty and administrators in the Law School's Experiential Education Program. The Clinic Director will spend the Summer and Fall of 2025 conducting a needs assessment, listening and learning about the existing landscape of housing advocates and legal service providers. The Clinic will take its first clients in January 2026.

Once operational, the Clinic Director will be responsible for all aspects of the operation and development of the Clinic. This will include developing the client base; acting as case manager and attorney of record for the Clinic’s docket; developing curricular materials for the Clinic’s seminar; teaching, supervising, and mentoring law students in the clinic; managing the Clinic’s reporting to internal and external stakeholders; planning the strategic growth and development of the Clinic; hiring and managing staffing of the Clinic; and cultivating and sustaining community partnerships. The Clinic Director will have office space at both the UCLA Law School campus in Westwood and the new Downtown space, and will be expected to spend time at both locations.

The Clinic Director will also act as a member of the law school faculty, serving on various committees and representing the law school in various University and Law School settings. In particular, the Clinic Director will contribute to the law school’s Clinical Program, working with the rest of the clinical faculty and Clinical Program Director to develop and sustain high quality experiential learning opportunities.

The ideal candidate will have significant legal experience in housing-related advocacy, particularly tenants’ rights. Demonstrated management, administrative, and organizational skills are also important. Previous experience teaching in a law school clinical setting is desirable but not required. Candidates must have a J.D. from an ABA-accredited law school, plus admission to the California Bar or willingness to sit for the California Bar.

This position is a full-time academic appointment in the Teaching Professor series (also referred to as the ‘Lecturer With Security Of Employment Series’). Teaching Professors are Academic Senate faculty members whose expertise and responsibilities center on teaching, as well as scholarly analysis and improvement of teaching methods. Appointment, merit, and promotion in the Teaching Professor series requires, in addition to excellence in teaching, evidence of professional and/or scholarly achievement and activity. While clinical faculty with security of employment or potential for security of employment are not expected to publish work of the same type and quantity as tenured and tenure-track faculty, they are expected to produce research and creative work that establishes their excellence in the substantive field and/or in experiential teaching.

Confidential review of applications, nominations and expressions of interest will begin immediately and continue until an appointment is made. Please apply online at https://recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF09847 by submitting pdf copies of a cover letter, CV or resume, Statement of Teaching and Clinic Vision, Statement on Research, Scholarship, or other Creative Work, the names and contact information for at least three professional references, and a Statement on Contributions to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Applicants with teaching experience should also include their teaching evaluations for the past three years.

This position has an expected start date of July 1, 2025, and is subject to the rules and regulations of the Regents of the University of California, which are mostly embodied in The UCLA CALL and the University of California Academic Personnel Manual. (See https://www.apo.ucla.edu/policies/the-call; and http://www.ucop.edu/acadpersonnel/apm/welcome.html.)

The posted UC salary scales set the minimum pay determined by rank and/or step at appointment. See Table 8. The salary range for this position is Step 1 to Step 9 ($189,900 - 288,300). “Off-scale salaries” and other components of pay, i.e., a salary that is higher than the published system-wide salary at the designated rank and step, are offered when necessary to meet competitive conditions.

The University of California is committed to creating and maintaining a community dedicated to the advancement, application, and transmission of knowledge and creative endeavors through academic excellence, where all individuals who participate in University programs and activities can work and learn together in a safe and secure environment, free of violence, harassment, bullying and other demeaning behavior, discrimination, exploitation, or intimidation. With this commitment as well as a commitment to addressing all forms of academic misconduct, UCLA conducts targeted employment reference checks for finalists to whom departments or other hiring units would like to extend formal offers of appointment into Academic Senate faculty positions. The targeted employment reference checks involve contacting the finalists’ current and prior places of employment to ask whether there have been substantiated findings of misconduct that would violate the University’s Faculty Code of Conduct. To implement this process, UCLA requires all applicants for Academic Senate faculty positions to complete, sign, and upload the form entitled “Authorization to Release Information” into RECRUIT as part of their application. If the applicant does not include the signed authorization to release information with the application materials, the application will be considered incomplete. As with any incomplete application, the application will not receive further consideration. Although all applicants for faculty recruitments must complete the entire application, only finalists (i.e., those to whom the department or other hiring unit would like to extend a formal offer) considered for Academic Senate faculty positions will be subject to targeted employment reference checks.

As a University employee, you will be required to comply with all applicable University policies and/or collective bargaining agreements, as may be amended from time to time. Federal, state, or local government directives may impose additional requirements.

The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age or protected veteran status.

For the University of California’s Affirmative Action Policy, please visit https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/_files/apm/apm-035.pdf.

For the University of California’s Anti-Discrimination Policy, please visit https://policy.ucop.edu/doc/1001004/Anti-Discrimination.