Can I fire my immigration lawyer? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our offices in St. Louis, Missouri and San Diego, California. One of our YouTube commenters is named Sandbox, and Sandbox is mad at his attorney or her attorney because Sandbox received an RFE and Sandbox says, "I want to fire my lawyer because my lawyer did not send in enough evidence. And that's what led me to get this request for evidence." Now, when I was a new immigration lawyer and clients or potential clients would come to me and say, "Jim, my immigration lawyer sucks. He's the worst, or she's the worst of all time. I hate them so much. They're terrible." I've learned to take that with a grain of salt. Number one, I've been on the receiving end of those complaints. And sometimes it's the client's mistakes. Sometimes it's our mistake, but sometimes it's the client's mistake or their unreasonableness or their just general kookiness that leads us to separate from them.
So when I hear someone saying that they want to fire their lawyer and Sandbox is saying they want to fire their lawyer, I want to dig a little more deeply. Of course, there are bad immigration lawyers out there, and there are bad notarios out there. Some people think they have a lawyer, but they really have a notario. So I understand that frustration can arise. And I can also understand that some lawyers just slap together a case and send it in. They don't send in lots and lots of evidence to try to get your case approved. So receiving a request for evidence could be an indication that there's something wrong with your case. We just took over a case for a nice couple from Virginia, and they've been trying to get the work card and a green card interview for a long time. And their lawyer kept screwing up their affidavit of support so I understand that lawyers make mistakes. We've made mistakes. We've had clients fire us. We sometimes fire our clients.
So I want to tell you all that because yes, the client always has the right to choose to not have a lawyer, to change lawyers or to hire a new lawyer. That's always your right, but you need to dig deeply. You need to say, is this my fault? Is this is their fault? Why do you want to make a change? What's the motivation? And so we really ... When someone calls our office and says that they're thinking of changing lawyers, we actually dig a little bit more deeply. We don't want to just jump in and say, oh yeah, we'll take over the case or oh yeah, we can save you. There might be reasons why there's problems with your case. And so just receiving an RFE is not necessarily a reason to fire your lawyer. It might be but not necessarily.
But overall Sandbox, the answer to your question is yes, you can terminate your lawyer. The best way to do that is to send them an email and say, I no longer want to work with you. I want to take my case and go elsewhere. We've had that happen a few times here, lately even. And so when you're handling as many cases as we are, we have hundreds and hundreds of open cases, that's going to happen. And when it does happen, we take a long, hard look at the case, see what we might've done differently, see what we might learn, but we're always willing to give a client their money back. We're always willing to give a client their case back if they don't want to have us be their lawyer anymore. It's fine. Life's too short for us to be fighting over these kinds of things.
So we want you to be happy. Hopefully you are happy. If you're having trouble with your lawyer, or if you think that you'd like to make a change or that you need a second opinion, feel free to give us a call. (314) 961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. We might tell you to go ahead and just stay with your lawyer. I've told that to many people. I said, no, there's nothing we can do here that's any different. Your lawyer is doing a good job. I have those conversations all the time. You can also join our Facebook group, Immigrant Home, and we'd love to have you in there. Follow our YouTube channel, subscribe there so that you get updates whenever we make videos like this one. And then finally on Tuesdays and Thursdays, usually at noon, central time, you can find me in our Facebook group answering as many of your immigration law related questions as possible. Thanks a lot and have a great day.
