THESE ARE WITHOUT QUESTION THE Top 4 Complaints About Immigration Lawyers:
- “They don’t return my phone calls” By far the Number One complaint. My own take on this is to reply to all calls as soon as possible and by that I mean same day, or within 24 hours, which I have done in 98-99% of cases for many years.
- “They don’t know the law.” Yes, this sounds unreal. But so many attorneys are trying to handle immigration cases without learning the law. The result: cases fail due to lack of knowledge on the part of the lawyer, who is busy also handling many other types of cases. Solution: find an immigration attorney who can answer your questions with authority. Even better, find a team of immigration lawyers.
- “They don’t answer emails.” This problem makes no sense to me. Today everyone spends every free second texting and scrolling on smart phones. If a lawyer cannot reply to emails, I do not know why. I answer all of my email all of the time. Weekends. Nights. Holidays. I figure that if I have time to answer friends and family, I certainly owe time to clients as well.
- “They didn’t do anything.” This one is trickier. Many times we review the work of other law firms. Our analysis: many attorneys put in effort. When the case does not have a successful result, the client concludes that nothing was done. While I will admit that I have seen some cases in 18 years in which the lawyer truly did nothing (or very little), that is rare. It is more about the quality of the work, or lack thereof.
I say this all the time: before you hire a lawyer, ask about the 4 issues above. Make inquiries as to firm policy on phone calls and emails. In addition, find out ahead of time if the immigration lawyers truly know their work and care about their clients. This information can be acquired by reading reviews from clients and other attorneys, as well as simply talking to the lawyers themselves.
