Not a damn law school question. Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our offices in St. Louis, San Diego, and Washington, DC. Many of you know that I am lucky enough to work with my beautiful spouse, Amany Hacking, Amany Ragab Hacking, and that she came to us after a long stint at St. Louis University School of Law. During her time at SLU Law, she was teaching immigration. I don't know if you know how law school works, but there aren't homework assignments, there aren't quizzes during the semester. Basically, you study the class the whole semester and you have one exam at the end of the semester. In that exam, you're usually going to be presented with one, two, or maybe three fact patterns. They'll tell you a story about a family and then you'll have to spot all the legal immigration issues.
Back when Amany was at the law school and teaching immigration, she would ask for my assistance in coming up with fact patterns. I absolutely loved it. It was really fun. Obviously, we would never put in any information that is of a confidential nature or a fact pattern that is so unique that the person we were talking about was readily identifiable. But rather, we would jam up or collect certain things that happened during the year, cases that we had that were a little bit unusual. It usually involves family members of mixed immigration status. You might have Dad on an H1B, Mom on an H4, kids on an H4, and maybe one US citizen kid. We'd always like to throw out some little fake things, like maybe the three year old child could sponsor the mother because she was facing deportation or something. We would always take all these immigration concepts, look at cases that we'd had during the year, and help Amany come up with a fact pattern so that the students could read over the case, and if they've studied properly, then they would know the issues or at least be familiar with the issues. This was a lot of fun for us.
I don't do that anymore because Amany doesn't teach at the law school, but I do get questions that sound like law school exam questions. Here's the thing. If you're an immigration client, if you're an immigration benefit seeker, you don't want to have a law school exam question. You want things to be nice and clean, nice and tight, very easily understandable, and very simple, because that's going to increase the chances of your cases being approved. You don't want to have a law school exam question.
Now, if you do, don't call the television show, the show that I do Tuesdays and Thursdays, and ask me about that. Because sometimes I'll be scratching my head and someone will be going on with this crazy fact pattern, and I'm like, "Dude, do you really, A, want to say all this stuff in front of the whole world? And two, do you really expect me to sit here and analyze all the moving pieces of your law school exam type question?" We simply can't do it. It would take up half the show. The purpose of the show is quick questions, quick answers, rules that are of general importance to everybody, not getting specific advice about a specific case, and I probably need to lead off the show with that next time. Try to keep things tighter. I think sometimes some of our viewers get a little frustrated because people do go on with their big-ass law school exam questions and the questions just go on and on and on. Keep it tight if you're calling, keep it tight if you're talking to a lawyer, and try to really distill and simplify the issues. Don't come on with a big rambling law school exam question.
Now, we can certainly handle those, and we do. Sometimes, when you're presented with a fact pattern that is complicated, we can certainly deal with that, but it takes a lot of unpacking, a lot of nuance, and a lot of detail requesting. You really need to make sure that you see the whole landscape, that you understand everything about the case before you give advice. That's why it's not well-suited for our television show.
If you have a law school exam type question, feel free to give us a call, 314-961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. You can certainly join us in our immigrant home Facebook group. Same deal though. Don't want the law school exam question in there. That's a place for simple questions, simple answers. Then, of course, we have our YouTube channel where we try to give away hundreds of videos with information for everybody that applies of a general nature.
Don't forget also, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have that immigration live show in our immigrant home Facebook group and on the YouTube channel. Make sure that you subscribe and that you join us there if you have any questions about your case. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot and have a great day.
