Legal Research & Just Transition Intern

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre is seeking an enthusiastic, reliable and well-organised Legal Research Intern to work with our Corporate Legal Accountability team, including on our Just Transition Litigation project. This internship opportunity is for applicants currently enrolled at university and/or that should complete an internship as part of their studies, either studying law (LLB/LLM/JD or similar) or with a legal background.

• Period: Minimum commitment of 14 hours a week, for a period of at least 4 months, starting mid to late January 2025.

• Location: This is a remote position in which the intern works from their home or university. Candidates must have at least 3.5 hours overlap within 8.30am-6pm CET.

• Application deadline: 27 November 2024

• To apply, please complete and return this application form. Kindly note that the application form is required; we will not accept CVs.

About us

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre is a global non-profit organisation that works with communities, civil society, companies and governments to drive human rights at the heart of business and eliminate abuse. The Resource Centre tracks the human rights policies and practices of over 10,000 companies worldwide to push for better human rights protections. Our website is a global business and human rights knowledge hub, delivering daily news in ten languages, with over 150,000 active users per month. Our Weekly Update e-newsletter has over 16,000 subscribers globally, including advocates, business-people, governments, investors and the UN.

The Resource Centre’s Corporate Legal Accountability (CLA) programme aims to strengthen the legal accountability of business actors so that rightsholders can exercise their rights and access justice when abuses occur by providing lawyers, legal practitioners and affected people the tools they need to support stronger cases against companies and improve access to legal remedy. We operate the only global information hub on corporate legal accountability where we track strategic lawsuits against companies over human rights abuses, and monitor legislative development to help hold companies accountable. Our Corporate Legal Accountability Portal is updated daily with information and resources from around the world.

Your tasks

1. Online legal research & inputs: find relevant news, commentaries, reports and court documents relating to lawsuits from around the world against companies over alleged human rights and environmental abuses, and legislative developments; compose abstracts and titles; create and update information on the website, including broken links.

2. Support the development of our Just Transition Litigation Tracking Tool: research relevant lawsuits to include in the tracking tool; draft a concise and accessible summary of these lawsuits.

3. Drafting & updating lawsuit profiles: summarise legal information about lawsuits brought against companies to redress human rights abuse and present them in a concise, accessible format.

4. Support Programme’s outputs: Draft the CLA Quarterly Update newsletter and participate in its dissemination; select key news items for inclusion in the Resource Centre’s Weekly Update.

5. Participate in (virtual) meetings, including fortnightly Global Team meetings with all staff and Regional Researchers.

6. Additional Tasks: You may also be asked to assist the Resource Centre with general, non-legal work, such as supporting our company response mechanism; liaising with relevant organisations etc.

Please note that this internship is not academically oriented and does not involve extensive analysis or writing.  Rather, it is a practical internship focused on bringing global attention to company conduct affecting people and communities, with the aim of promoting respect for human rights.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Legal studies. Currently enrolled in university, either studying law (LLB/LLM/JD or similar) or with a legal background.

• Research & analytical skills. Ability to carry out general research, including online and to summarise information clearly and succinctly. Demonstrated academic or professional experience carrying out research and analysing information.

• Legal analysis & research skills. Academic and/or work experience carrying out legal research.

• Commitment to human rights. Interest in and commitment to promoting human rights.

• Data input capacity. Ability and willingness to do large amount of routine data input on a daily basis.

• Language skills. Excellent English language skills (reading/writing/speaking). Fluency in French, Spanish, Arabic or Russian highly is desirable (but not essential). Good working knowledge of other languages is a plus.

• Initiative. Ability to use own initiative and to work independently. Motivated by achieving results and completing tasks.

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre strives to be an equal opportunities employer.

We reserve the right to close a position before the deadline in case of a high volume of applications or a change in the organisation’s priorities.

TO APPLY: Complete and return this application form via our jobs portal. Kindly note that the application form is required; we will not accept CVs. If you need any additional support, please reach out to Bea Ocampo at  ocampo@business-humanrights.org.

Keywords

Legal ResearchJust TransitionInternBusinessHuman RightsAccountabilityLitigationLawsuitsLegal AnalysisData InputLanguage SkillsInitiative