Legal Administrative Specialist - Environmental Enforcement Section

Legal Administrative Specialist - Environmental Enforcement Section; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 80,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Telework

Paid vacation

Sick leave

Holidays

Life insurance

Health benefits

Federal Employees Retirement System

Job summary

The U.S. Department of Justice's Environmental Enforcement Section in the Energy and Natural Resources Division seeks a Legal Administrative Specialist to support debt collection case management, data extraction, and financial coding across federal databases.

Responsibilities include interpreting settlements and judgments, generating reports, coordinating with attorneys and agencies, and ensuring accurate entry and transmission of data for timely collections.

Qualifications

• Specialized experience interpreting legal documents and managing data in case systems.
• Experience interpreting settlement agreements and judgments for accurate financial coding.
• Ability to generate standard and ad hoc reports.

Responsibilities

• Review complex documents to extract data and input into databases.
• Interpret settlements and judgments to ensure accurate monetary coding.
• Ensure penalties and funds are allocated correctly across systems.
• Record non-monetary relief and value, and note timelines for projects.
• Coordinate with ENRD attorneys and FLPs to support debt collection processes.
• Prepare and send emails summarizing financial data and case information.
• Transmit data to the Department-wide debt collection database and notify FLP of payments.

Tools

Case Management System

Job description

Summary

This position is located in the Environmental Enforcement Section, Energy and Natural Resources Division. The Section is responsible for bringing civil judicial actions under federal laws enacted to protect public health and the environment from pollution, such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Superfund law. The incumbent will perform database management associated with debt collection cases and other legal functions for the Section.

Duties

Responsibilities of a Legal Administrative Specialist include:

• Reviewing a variety of complex documents (including case referrals, memos, emails, settlement agreements, court judgments) to extract relevant data and case information, input data, and perform quality assurance across multiple databases.
• Interpreting settlement agreements, court judgments, and other legal documents to ensure accurate financial coding of all debts owed to the United States.
• Ensuring that certain penalties are routed to special funds, defendants are assessed the correct amounts, payments are routed to the proper federal agency, and monetary penalties are distinguished from costs and natural resource damages.
• Interpreting all non-monetary relief and accurately recording its estimated value; noting whether work required will take longer than 3 years to complete; and distinguishing between mitigation projects and injunctive relief work required to achieve compliance with relevant statutes.
• Coordinating with EES attorneys to tailor the language used in payment provisions for settlement agreements, so that provisions are sufficiently clear and precise for the subsequent creation of debts and the financial coding of payments.
• Writing clear and concise emails to attorneys summarizing financial data or seeking financial data and other case information.
• Ensuring that accurate and timely information is transmitted to the Department-wide debt collection database and notifying the Financial Litigation Program (FLP) of the U.S. Attorney's Offices to send payment instructions to defendants.
• Coordinating with ENRD attorneys, FLPs, client agencies and other internal and external stakeholders to support the accurate and timely collection of monies owed to the United States.
• Generating multiple standard (often monthly) reports and designing ad hoc reports as needed to assist managers.
• Reviewing and transmitting Federal Register notices for publication, gathering any public comments, and routing public comments to the appropriate attorneys.
• Coordinating with the Financial Litigation Unit of the U.S. Attorneys' Offices in all 93 judicial districts to ensure collection of monies owed, working to resolve collection problems, and transmitting financial information and court documents to the U.S. EPA.

Conditions of employment

• You must be a U.S. citizen or national.
• You must complete a background investigation to include pre-employment drug testing.
• Selective Service Registration is required, as applicable.
• You must complete or have completed a one-year supervisory probationary period.
• You must maintain a bank account for direct deposit of salary.

Qualifications

To qualify for GS-12: You must have at least one year of specialized experience at, or equivalent to, the GS-11 Federal grade level or above 1) interpreting legal documents that initiate and conclude environmental cases in litigation; and (2) working with the Case Management System, recording all required information into the database, interpreting and reviewing the data to assure its accuracy and completeness, and extracting the relevant data from the database in response to requests for information.

Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religious; spiritual; community; student; social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skill and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience.

Time in Grade: Federal employees must meet time-in-grade requirements (one year at the next lower grade) by the closing date of announcement.

YOUR RESUME MUST support your responses to the online questionnaire and provide specific details as to how your experience meets the specialized experience as described in the vacancy announcement if you are using experience to meet all or part of the qualification requirements. Please ensure that your resume includes the month and year that you began and ended each position held or that position will not be credited toward meeting the specialized experience requirement. Part-time employment will be prorated in crediting experience. Failure to provide details will result in an ineligible rating. Your latest resume submitted for this vacancy announcement will be used to determine qualifications and supersedes previous submissions.

Only experience and education obtained by the closing date of this announcement will be considered.

Education

There is no substitution of education for experience at this grade level.

Additional information

Career Transition Assistance Plan (CTAP): The Career Transition Assistance Program provides eligible surplus and displaced competitive service employees in DOJ with selection priority over other candidates for competitive service vacancies. If you have received written notification of your eligibility for consideration under CTAP, you may receive special priority consideration for this position, if this vacancy is within your CTAP eligibility and you are well-qualified for the position. To be well qualified, you must satisfy all qualification requirements and score 85 or better on established ranking criteria.

Selective Service: If you are a male applicant born after December 31, 1959, you must certify that you have registered with the Selective Service System, or is exempt from having to do so under the Selective Service Law. Additional information is found at: www.sss.gov.

Benefits: DOJ offers a comprehensive benefits package that includes, in part, paid vacation; sick leave; holidays; telework; life insurance; health benefits; and participation in the Federal Employees Retirement System. Please review the link below for an overview of the benefits currently offered to Federal employees.

• paid vacation
• sick leave
• holidays
• telework
• life insurance
• health benefits
• participation in the Federal Employees Retirement System

Candidates should be committed to improving the efficiency of the Federal government, passionate about the ideals of our American republic, and committed to upholding the rule of law and the United States Constitution.

Learn more about federal benefits

Review our benefits

Eligibility for benefits depends on the type of position you hold and whether your position is full-time, part-time or intermittent. Contact the hiring agency for more information on the specific benefits offered.