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We are hiring a lawyer to join our Forests and Climate team. In this role, you will be focusing on laws regulating trade in commodities linked with deforestation. You will be working particularly on matters relating to the design, implementation, and enforcement of a new EU regulation, but will also touch on similar laws in other jurisdictions, and implementation of other laws relevant to forest protection more generally.

The Forest and Climate Team works in both producer and consumer countries to protect forests and biodiversity. Our work includes promotion of community forestry and the rights of local communities and indigenous peoples through legal reform, empowerment and capacity building, and improved benefit-sharing agreements. We work in the EU and UK on the legality of imported timber products (EUTR) and the creation of legal frameworks to hold corporations and investors accountable for risks to deforestation and biodiversity loss. Our work includes both policy engagement and strategic legal advocacy and litigation when appropriate.

In this role, you will be analysing complex legal questions and policy scenarios and producing high-quality outputs, including public-facing briefings. There will be a strong focus on carrying out advocacy with decision-makers (i.e. European Commission and European Members of Parliament for EU regulation) to secure adoption of ClientEarth's recommendations, on providing legal support to other NGOs, and on developing innovative legal strategies for enforcement and implementation of forest governance mechanisms.

In this role, your main duties will include:

• Critically analysing legislative and policy proposals in order to influence their content;
• Monitoring and influencing the implementation, interpretation, and enforcement of relevant legislation;
• Drafting legal advocacy briefings, research notes, and presentations;
• Co-ordinating with other NGOs to avoid or minimise the placing of products associated with deforestation or forest degradation on the EU market;
• Representing ClientEarth in external meetings and undertaking advocacy with relevant stakeholders at EU and national level;
• Disseminating ClientEarth's messages including through interviews with journalists, Twitter, specialised press, radio, etc.;
• Contributing to programme strategy development;
• Assisting in the preparation of funding proposals and reports to donors.

See the job description on our website for the full list of duties for this role.

Role requirements:

• Law degree (essential);
• Legal professional qualification (desirable);
• Experience with EU law/lawmaking (essential);
• Experience working with civil society organizations and/or regulators (desirable);
• Knowledge of the principles and logic of regulatory risk assessment and management (essential);
• English at CEFR Level C2 (essential);
• Outstanding written and oral communication skills (essential).

See the job description on our website for the full list of requirements for this role.

Further Information:

Have a question on this job? Please visit our Recruitment FAQs page.

ClientEarth values diversity and inclusion and the benefits this brings. We aim to appoint the most suitable candidate at all times and welcome applications from people from all different backgrounds. We particularly encourage applications from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) candidates, as these groups are currently under-represented in our organisation.

Please note that ClientEarth will only be able to employ those who have the pre-existing legal right to work in Belgium.

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