FULL TRANSCRIPT
[The following is the full transcript of the blog video: Should I hire an immigration lawyer?]
Hi there, this is Erick Widman from Passage Immigration Law. And I want to share with you a common question that I get and other immigration attorneys get from potential clients who come into our office. And the question is, do I really need to hire an immigration lawyer to handle my case? It’s a good question. You got to watch out though, because similar to asking a barber, if you need a haircut, the barber is always gonna say, of course. But actually, I’ll take an initially different approach to that. And you you don’t need an immigration lawyer to file your case. Because unlike a barber, you start to cut your own hair, you can, you can definitely file the paperwork on your own. The closest analogy perhaps, is filing your taxes on your own. You don’t need a CPA. But the thing is, I want to share with you here, three main reasons why you might want to consider hiring an immigration lawyer and why our own clients decide to file it on their own, or go with us. So Reason number one, is to avoid catastrophic or obvious errors. By catastrophic errors, I mean, filing the wrong thing, or spending a bunch of money on something that you shouldn’t have, you could file the wrong waiver, you might not be eligible to file or there might be really dire quants consequences from filing right now. So immigration lawyers are good at spotting issues and spotting catastrophic potential outcomes. Second thing is obvious errors to avoid, we can avoid those because we won’t send packets to the wrong address. Crazy things happen with us cis, and we learn from those issues and we can avoid them. So hiring someone who does it all the time, you can avoid those those issues as well. Okay, second key area is the desire to get better outcomes, especially in discretionary issues or areas where the adjudicator is having to use your best judgment to decide a close call. So for example, proving a genuine marriage, or proving that you qualify for a specific category and a business visa, where it’s not an obvious fit, or where you have to use a legal argument to explain why the criteria is in fact met based on case law. So there you’re getting you’re venturing into legal territory clearly. Being able to provide the strongest possible case is often where immigration lawyers really come in and deliver value in a big way. Just like turning in a paper, at school, college or high school, you want to get an A as well, a well reasoned argument, a cover letter, well organized content that is going to impress the adjudicator. Rather than turning in something that is not so quality, you don’t want to turn and see work. especially in this day and age, you got to turn in top notch work to get the best outcomes. Finally, a third reason why most of our clients end up hiring us who do choose to not file themselves is attorney client privilege. So thankfully, in the US, we have robust protections within our legal system, that when you hire an attorney, everything is confidential. Everything that you share with your attorney is protected and the government cannot intrude upon that very important private space so that you can get the best legal advice possible. So you can have candid conversations with your lawyer. And this is becoming increasingly important when you cross the border. When you have an immigration lawyer representing you. All of your communications, all of your email are not searchable by the CBP officer who might otherwise be able to do that when he tells you to unlock your phone. And let me see your email. So if you have a folder like we recommend to our clients, with attorney client privilege notated on that folder. They’re not allowed to go in and look at your email in that folder so our communications are protected. You again in general don’t need to get an immigration attorney to file your packet for you. But I hope these three reasons why most people do decide to go with an attorney has been helpful.
