The Farmworker and Landscaper Advocacy Project (FLAP)- Proyecto de Ayuda para Trabajadores del Campo y Jardineros is the only organization providing free legal services specifically to workers in agriculture, horticulture, food production, restaurant and landscaping industries in Illinois regardless of their immigration status.

FLAP’s mission is to improve working conditions and opportunities for low-income workers and their households in these industries: cannery, farms, greenhouse, landscaping, meat, nursery, packinghouse, poultry, restaurants, and snow plowing. The organization carries out its mission through advocacy, community outreach and education, litigation, community legal education, information and referrals, partnering with other organizations to fight human labor trafficking, preventing family separations by helping immigrants secure dual citizenship for their children and facilitating access to cash transfers to very low-income populations. FLAP provides these services free of charge and without regard to immigration status. FLAP files wage and hour claims directly in-house and refers all manner of other claims to area attorneys and agencies.

During COVID-19 all FLAP personnel is working remotely. A FLAP PILI fellow will be engaged in actively supporting and engaging in Advocacy, Community Legal Education and litigation: legal research writing, drafting all manner of pleadings including complaints, motion practice, discovery, and settlement agreements, investigating claims and gathering facts from clients conducting intakes; answering clients’ substantive and procedural questions, doing damage calculations and other work related to our wage and hour cases primarily filed in federal court. Those fellows who speak Spanish will also have the opportunity to engage in the organization outreach and/or community legal education doing Know your Rights presentations at the Mexican Consulate in Chicago and/or virtually using the organization’s social media channels as well as attend meetings and/or events with other law firms and community organizations.

Applicants should be responsible and very sensitive to the legal problems faced by immigrants, especially wage-theft and hazardous working conditions.

This agency is approved to host Graduate Fellows.