Legal Counsel, Director of Blackstone Professional Development

Adflegal; Lansdowne (VA); On-site; USD 127,000 - 219,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Full benefits package

Health and dental insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid holidays

Paid time off

Job summary

Alliance Defending Freedom seeks a Legal Counsel, Director of Blackstone Professional Development in Lansdowne, VA (Dallas, TX). The role leads the curriculum, assessment framework, and placement strategy for the Blackstone Fellowship, shaping the next generation of Christian legal practitioners.

Minimum qualifications include a Juris Doctor, active bar license, 5+ years of legal experience, and proven leadership in program management and attorney development.

Qualifications

• Juris Doctor from an accredited law school and active license in at least one U.S. state bar.
• 5+ years of legal experience post-JD.
• Experience in both public and private sectors of the legal profession.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills with law students, hiring partners, and judges.
• Experience in professional network development with judges, practitioners, and academics.
• Experience in complex program management on a fixed clerkship/academic-year calendar.
• Staff leadership and development experience, including setting standards and corrective feedback.
• 25% or more travel throughout the year.

Responsibilities

• Assess and defend judgments about interns and Fellows, calibrating over time against outcomes.
• Develop and maintain the assessment framework used across the professional development function.
• Deliver candid, specific assessments to Fellows regarding capabilities and opportunities.
• Set the intellectual direction of the professional development curriculum and oversee revisions.
• Determine curriculum content and instructors, informed by doctrinal developments and market conditions.
• Oversee the summer internship program, placement, and evaluation.
• Build and maintain relationships with federal chambers and clerkship alumni.
• Advise Fellows on decisions with long-term consequences across private practice, government, academia, and public interest litigation.
• Counsel Fellows on sustaining conviction and effectiveness under institutional pressure.
• Maintain relationships with law schools, student organizations, faculties, government agencies, and the public interest bar.
• Represent the Fellowship at regional events and conferences.
• Lead and coach professional development staff and conduct career path discussions.

Skills

Written communication

Verbal communication

Leadership

Staff development

Program management

Legal talent development

Travel readiness

Education

Juris Doctor (JD)

Job description

Legal Counsel, Director of Blackstone Professional Development

Make a difference with us! At Alliance Defending Freedom, we believe God has brought you here for His purpose—to stand for truth and defend the God-given right to live and speak it. Together, we protect religious freedom, free speech, the sanctity of life, marriage and family, and parental rights. Review our Statement of Faith to ensure we’re a fit for you.

Locations: Lansdowne, VA / Dallas, TX

Team Overview

The Blackstone Legal Fellowship is a rigorous formation for gifted Christian law students whose judgment and moral imagination are rooted in the rule of law, and who go on to shape law and culture—courtrooms, boardrooms, legislatures, and law schools are the visible examples, but the reach is wider: agencies and regulatory bodies, state and federal government, media and publishing, medicine and bioethics, technology, education, ministry, and the institutions that have not yet been built.

The Director of Blackstone Professional Development owns the quality of the counsel that shapes those decisions. The role does not place Fellows into positions. It equips them to discern, prepare for, and compete for opportunities of real consequence, and it builds the curriculum, advisor network, and institutional relationships that deliver that counsel to a full class each summer and to a growing body of alumni in practice.

Key Responsibilities

Assessment and Investment

• Form and defend judgments about individual Blackstone summer interns and Fellows’ capacity, trajectory, and professional fit, and calibrate those judgments over time against actual career outcomes.
• Develop and maintain the assessment framework used across the professional development function, including the signals that predict success.
• Deliver candid, specific assessments to Blackstone summer interns and Fellows regarding the capabilities standing between them and the positions they are pursuing.

Curriculum and Program Design

• Set the intellectual direction of the professional development curriculum and own its design, sequencing, and annual revision across all phases of the Fellowship.
• Determine what is taught, by whom, and what is removed, informed by doctrinal developments, hiring market conditions, and Fellow outcomes.
• Establish and enforce quality standards for all workshops, seminars, guest lectures, and outside speakers.
• Teach the portions of the curriculum where the Director's own judgment and experience are the substance.
• Oversee the summer internship program, including placement, employer expectations, performance standards, and evaluation.

Clerkship and Career Advising

• Own clerkship outcomes end-to-end, including application strategy, materials review, recommender cultivation, and interview preparation.
• Build and maintain relationships with federal chambers and clerkship alumni sufficient to ensure Fellow applications receive serious consideration.
• Advise Fellows on decisions with long-term consequences, including first position selection, transitions, and the choice among private practice, government service, academia, and public interest litigation.
• Counsel Fellows on sustaining conviction and effectiveness under institutional pressure during the early years of practice.

Placement and Employer Relations

• Cultivate the employer relationships that establish the standing of the Blackstone credential in advance of any individual application.
• Serve employers actively recruiting Fellows, and protect the credential by advancing only candidates who meet the standard.
• Place Fellows deliberately, prioritizing strategic position over volume of placements.
• With the Alumni Team track Fellow career trajectories and treat departures from the field as a diagnostic input to program design.
• Recruit senior practitioners and accomplished Fellows into a structured external advisory network.
• Train advisors on the standard of counsel expected, and hold the network to consistent candor and quality so that Fellow outcomes do not depend on advisor assignment.
• Sustain institutional relationships with law schools, student organizations, faculties, government agencies, and the public interest bar.
• Represent the Fellowship at regional events and conferences.
• Lead as a servant leader by training, coaching, and developing professional development staff.
• Coach in specifics and deliver corrective feedback early rather than at scheduled review.
• Meet regularly with direct reports to discuss progress and conduct Career Path Discussions.
• Foster a team culture of trust, candor, and innovation in which staff can identify what is not working without hesitation.
• Approve PTO requests, time cards, and expense reports.

Internal Coordination

• Work with ADF recruitment to ensure Fellowship intake reflects the standards the professional development function requires.
• Coordinate across ADF teams so that the function meets the needs of Fellows, internal partners, and employers.
• Participate in Fellowship leadership planning and contribute to organizational strategy on legal talent development.

Minimum Qualifications

• Juris Doctor from an accredited law school, active license in at least one U.S. state bar.
• 5+ years of legal experience post J.D.
• Experience in both the public and private sectors of the legal profession.
• Excellent w ritten and oral communication skills with law students, hiring partners, and sitting judges.
• Experience in professional network development, including relationships with judges, practitioners, and academics.
• Experience in complex program management on a fixed calendar set by the clerkship cycle and academic year rather than internal preference.
• Staff leadership and development experience, including setting standards and delivering corrective feedback.
• 25% or more travel throughout the year.

At Alliance Defending Freedom, we offer competitive compensation and a comprehensive benefits package to support your well-being and growth. Our benefits include 100% covered medical and dental insurance, medical and dependent care reimbursement, paid disability, long-term care, life insurance, and a 401(k) plan with a 4% company match. We prioritize work-life balance with paid time off and 12 paid holidays each year.

This salary range is reflective of a position based in Lansdowne, VA. This range is a good-faith estimate, and the actual salary may vary based on the candidate’s experience, skills, qualifications, and office location.

Virginia Salary Range

$127,200 - $219,300 USD

Statement of Faith

Based on our adherence to the inspired, infallible, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God in Scripture, we profess with the Christian Church throughout time and around the world the faith expressed in the Apostles’ Creed:

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

Doctrinal Distinctives

Also, based on this confession, we are committed to honoring God by obeying the two Greatest Commandments, loving God and loving neighbor, and based on that commitment and derived from the inspired, infallible, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God in Scripture, we profess the following as necessary for living the gospel:

• We believe in the spiritual unity and equality of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.
• We believe that the Lordship of Christ requires us as disciples to seek to conform our actions, thoughts, and desires in obedience to Him.
• We believe God creates each person with an immutable biological sex - male or female - that reflects the image and likeness of God.
• We believe God designed marriage as a unique conjugal relationship joining one man and one woman in a single, exclusive, life-long union, and God intends sexual intimacy only to occur within that relationship.
• We believe God endows all human life with inherent dignity, and it must be respected and protected from conception to natural death.
• We believe that God has endowed all humans with the natural, and inalienable right of religious freedom to believe, pursue truth, and live within ordered liberty such that no civil government may justly infringe upon it.
• We believe that God, through His Son, Jesus Christ, calls all of us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him, knowing that He promises us abundant and eternal life.