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About the attorney

I was an international student before I was an immigration lawyer.

Joe Kwon, immigration attorney, seated outside a limestone building in Nashville and smiling at the camera.

I am Joe Kwon. I practice business immigration in Nashville, in Korean and English, and I am the attorney on your case, so the person who reads your file is the person you talked to.

Joe Kwon Law is a business and employment immigration practice. Most of what I do is work visas and employment-based green cards, with the family cases that come up alongside them. U.S. immigration law is federal law, so where you live does not decide who can represent you.

The part I am actually good at is telling you which path is real for you and which one is not, and saying so plainly when the honest answer is not yet.

Services

This office does not run every case through the same template. I know that is what every firm says, so the rest of this page is the part you can check.

Book a consultation

The part you can check

  • 2016

    In immigration law and policy

    It began on the policy side, as a policy coordinator and lobbyist at the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. That is advocacy work, not the practice of law.

  • 2018

    Licensed to practice in Tennessee

    Work on cases began that year. Every attorney on the Tennessee roll can be looked up by name at tbpr.org, and that includes me.

  • 2022-2026

    Super Lawyers Rising Stars, Tennessee

    Rising Stars is a listing, not an award received. A description of the selection methodology is available at superlawyers.com/about/selection-process .

  • 50

    States, because the law is federal

    U.S. immigration law is federal law, so where you live does not decide who can represent you.

Why I do this work

I came here from Korea and grew up in Nashville. College and law school were both at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and the undergraduate degree is in Classics, which mostly means I spent four years reading Latin and Greek before I ever read a statute.

“I was an international student myself, so I know the particular feeling of having your plans sit inside an envelope in a government building with no way to make it move any faster.”

I have worked in immigration law and policy since 2016. It started on the policy side, as a policy coordinator and lobbyist at the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, which is advocacy work and not the practice of law. I was licensed to practice law in Tennessee in 2018, and my work on cases began then.

The reason I ended up in immigration law is not complicated. When a Korean client loses out, it is usually not because their record was weak. It is because nobody told them what was on the table.

I meet people who spent years on the one path their employer named. EB-2 NIW, an employment-based green card you can file for yourself without an employer sponsoring you, was open to them the whole time. It just never came up.

So the first thing I do in a consultation is not persuasion. It is translation: what the standard actually looks at, where your record is strong, and where it is thin, in ordinary words. Then you decide.

How I actually work

There is no way to tell how a firm actually works from a website. Here are three things about how this office runs that you can check, and hold me to.

  1. I tell you when the answer is no.

    A weak petition filed anyway costs you a year and a filing fee, and it leaves a denial in your record that the next attorney has to explain. If your profile is not there yet, I will say so, and I will tell you what would have to change. Some consultations end with me not taking the case. That is a real result of the consultation, not a failure of it.

  2. One flat fee, quoted in three lines.

    The attorney fee, government filing fees, and other costs, listed separately, so you can see what goes to the government and what goes to me. Nothing is billed by the hour. Where a fee entry covers a response to a Request for Evidence, which is the notice an officer sends when they want more proof, answering it is inside the fee you already agreed to rather than a new invoice. There are no per-criterion or per-letter add-ons.

  3. You are hiring me, not a firm.

    Joe Kwon Law is a small office, and it is built that way on purpose. The paralegals do real work on your case and you will know who they are. The judgment, the strategy, and the petition itself are mine. When you want to know why a decision was made, you are asking the person who made it.

Credentials, and how to check them

You should be able to look a lawyer up before you ever speak to one. Here is what there is to verify about me.

Licensed in Tennessee

No. 036694

The Tennessee board publishes a public lookup for every attorney on the Tennessee roll, and that includes me.
Checktbpr.org
Juris Doctor
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, College of Law.
Bachelor of Arts, Classics
University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Four years of Latin and Greek before a single statute.

None of that shows you the work itself. The case records set out matters the firm has handled, one at a time, with what was filed and how it was argued.

Read the case records

Before you hire anyone, including me

This is the one thing on the page I would tell you even if you never get in touch.

Only a licensed U.S. attorney or a representative accredited by the U.S. Department of Justice may give immigration legal advice or represent you before USCIS. In the United States, a notario, a notary public, an immigration consultant, or an unlicensed agency cannot do either, whatever they promise. Before you hand over personal documents or pay anyone, verify their license. Any Tennessee attorney can be looked up at tbpr.org.

The team

Who else works on your case

Two paralegals support the filing work. Anything that takes legal judgment comes back to me.

  • Da Young Yu

    Paralegal

    Da Young studied at UCLA and has handled a range of U.S. immigration matters, family based and employment based. Before joining the firm she worked as an immigration paralegal, preparing filings, drafting documents, and communicating with clients throughout the process. She works in Korean and English.

  • Yasmin Majzoub

    Paralegal

    Yasmin has worked across family based and business immigration, including employment based petitions and adjustment of status. She holds a Brazilian law degree from Centro Universitario das Faculdades Metropolitanas Unidas (FMU) in Sao Paulo, and completed the AILA paralegal training program. Outside work she is at rock concerts, on a beach volleyball court, or holding a karaoke mic.

Service

Where else I show up

Boards, committees and the two listings. None of it says anything about how a case of yours would go, and all of it is checkable with the organization rather than with me.

Current and incoming Korean American Association of Greater Nashville, and others
  • Korean American Association of Greater Nashville Legal Counsel 2026 to present
  • Nashville Entrepreneur Center Legal Advisor 2026 to present
  • The Slants Foundation Board Member 2024 to present
  • The Dan and Margaret Maddox Fund Board Member, incoming 2027 class
Past Tennessee Bar Association, and others
  • API Middle Tennessee Governance Committee Chair and Board Member 2020 to 2022
  • Tennessee Bar Association Special Committee on the Future Practice of Law 2020 to 2021
  • Tennessee Bar Association Young Lawyers Division, Publications Committee 2019 to 2020
  • Friends of Mill Ridge Park Governance Committee and Board Member 2019 to 2021
  • Rejoice School of Ballet Board Chair 2018 to 2019
  • Tennessee Youth Courts Advisory Committee Member 2018 to 2019
Listings
  • Super Lawyers, Thomson Reuters Selected to the Tennessee Rising Stars list 2022 to 2026

    Rising Stars is a listing, not an award received. A description of the selection methodology is available at superlawyers.com/about/selection-process.

  • The Immies 2026 Nominated, Trailblazer Award 2026

    A nomination, not a win.

Published, quoted and broadcast by

None of these organizations is a page I control, and none of them endorses this firm. Where a link exists, the mark opens the piece where it ran.

See every piece, with its date and source

Why there is no downtown office

The address at the bottom of every page on this site is a virtual office. It receives mail, and it is not somewhere to visit. I would rather say that plainly than let it sit there looking like something it is not, so here is the reasoning behind it.

It is published so the firm resolves as one entity across this site, the Google Business Profile and the directories.

The work itself is federal, and what it actually consists of is paper. A petition gets assembled, argued and filed, and then an officer reads it somewhere neither of us will ever visit. A lease on a lobby would end up inside your fee and would buy you nothing. I would rather that money went to the part you actually receive: the hours spent on your record, the brief, and the person writing it.

If any of that sounds like your situation

A consultation is where I find out whether there is a case here, and where you find out whether you want me handling it. Both are worth knowing before anyone signs anything.

Book a consultation

Booking does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Book a consultation