Legal Review Committee

CECorps Committee Member Position Description

All Community Engineering Corps (CECorps) projects follow a rigorous process to provide a professional standard of care and appropriate response to community needs. While all project team deliverables are submitted to CECorps for a comprehensive review, the quality of the work product is ultimately the responsibility of the project team.

Description and Responsibilities

The Legal Review Committee (LRC) plays a crucial role in ensuring compliance of professional engineering services in accordance with state and federal requirements and mitigates legal risk to CECorps and the volunteers working on the project. LRC members are responsible for the review of a volunteer project team’s legal documents and responding to the project team when legal concerns are raised. Members of the LRC also provide counsel on program-level legal issues.
In particular, the LRC reviewers:

• Review project team deliverables including their work plan and engineering services agreement. This review examines the scope of the project to minimize and mitigate legal risk and helps ensure that the projects protect and preserve public health, safety, and welfare.
• Address project issues of a legal nature.
• Participate in a monthly conference call to discuss other legal matters that the CECorps program may encounter.
• Annually review CECorps legal documents, such as the engineering service agreement template and volunteer waiver.
• Are accountable to their fellow reviewers for providing a timely review; to the project teams for providing transparent feedback; and ultimately to the community in providing a professional standard of care.

Qualifications and Requirements

Legal review volunteers are individuals committed to the CECorps mission who have extensive experience in fields of law relevant to the engineering services that CECorps provides.
Required experience and qualifications include:

• Licensed member of the bar in the United States
• At least four years’ experience related to construction law
• Active membership with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), American Water Works Association (AWWA), or Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA)

Time Commitment

The average monthly time commitment is between 1 and 10 hours. Volunteer effort varies depending on the number of active CECorps projects and pressing program legal issues.

Financial Commitment

Each LRC member must hold an active professional membership with of one of the three CECorps partner organizations: American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), American Water Works Association (AWWA), or Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA). The membership fee is the only financial commitment the LRC reviewer is required to make.