Why is it important to know my immigration lawyer's reputation in the community?
Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States out of our office here in St. Louis, Missouri.
I thought of this video idea, actually speaking with Amany, my wife, my fellow immigration law partner and we were talking about a particular lawyer in town. There is a lawyer in town who, we have taken over probably, literally 15 or 20 cases that this lawyer had previously handled.
This lawyer is a very nice guy, I like him a lot, but he charges very, very low prices. He advertises a lot on Google and from what we've seen of the work that he does, he's not very thorough.
I think he's well-intentioned, I don't think he's trying to take advantage of people, but the cases that he files are very thin and poorly documented and confusing and sometimes the legal theories aren't that good or aren't that well developed. We end up having to try to fix these mistakes by this lawyer.
I still like him, I know it's a strange thing, I wish he was a little more thorough, but in any event, the reason I wanted to shoot this video is because I thought to myself, do you think that USCIS looks at his clients' cases with greater scrutiny?
In other words, are his cases held to a higher standard or scrutinized more heavily because he has developed a reputation in St. Louis for filing crappy cases? I think that they do. I think that USCIS does give my firm the benefit of the doubt because we're so thorough.
We've had officers tell us that, that we're very thorough. Obviously, there is still some times when something is missing or a mistake is made, everybody understands that, but I do think that on closer cases, we get a little bit of a pass and I also think that sometimes officers go more quickly on our cases because we've put them together properly, documented them properly and prepared them properly.
I think that when you're interviewing immigration lawyers, you might want to try to get a sense of how often do you get requests for evidence, what was the most recent case that you lost. Try to get a sense of what the attorney's reputation is.
You might even ask immigration lawyers that you interview about the other immigration lawyers in town. If you're thinking about hiring Mr. X, you can ask, "What about Mr. X? Is he a good immigration lawyer?" Or you can ask non-immigration lawyers about that person's reputation.
I think reputation, it isn't everything, but it's important and it's especially important in how your lawyer's cases are perceived at the local field office during interviews because if your attorney has a reputation for just throwing a bunch of crap together and literally we've seen files, not necessarily even from this lawyer, but other immigration lawyers around the country, who just filed crap.
The documents are thin, the documents are missing, the forms aren't prepared properly. So it's good to get a good assessment and you're going to make a better decision.
Of course, that's why we make these videos in the first place, to empower you to make a good decision in how to best precede with USCIS.
That very well not involve hiring our firm, but that's just fine. I make these videos for you to try to help you out because we want to help as many people as we can move up the immigration ladder.
If you have questions about this, give us a call at 314-961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. We'd love to have you in there. And if you like this video, subscribe to our YouTube Channel and make sure that you share this out on social.
Thanks a lot, have a great day.
