Choosing counsel
The questions are more useful than the answers.
Most people comparing immigration help are comparing marketing pages, because that is what is in front of them. So here are the questions I would ask if I were the one hiring, what each answer actually tells you, and how to check it without trusting anybody. Run them against this firm too. That is the point of writing them down.
Seven questions worth asking
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Is the thing I am hiring a law firm?
This is the first question because it changes every other answer. A law firm owes you a professional duty of confidentiality, a duty of loyalty, and a conflicts check, and it is answerable to a state licensing board that can take its license away. A company that is not a law firm owes you what its terms of service say it owes you. Both can be perfectly legitimate. They are not the same purchase, and the difference is invisible on a marketing page.
How to check Read the footer and the terms of service, not the headline. If a provider is not a law firm, look for where it says so. Search the site for the phrase "not a law firm" before you search it for anything else.
This firm's answer
Joe Kwon Law, PLLC is a law firm. Every page on this site carries the responsible attorney, the license and the bar number in its footer, because Tennessee requires a lawyer's advertisement to name who is responsible for it.
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Will the lawyer I am talking to be the lawyer on my petition?
A consultation does not tell you who will write the brief. Nothing in that meeting settles whether the person across the table is the person who drafts the filing, and it is a fair thing to ask outright. That is not automatically bad work. It does mean the judgment you evaluated in the meeting may not be the judgment that goes into the filing, so you may have evaluated the wrong thing.
How to check Ask, in those words, who signs the petition and who writes the brief. Then ask who you will be speaking to when there is a problem. If the answer is a team or a department, ask for the name of the attorney of record.
This firm's answer
There is one attorney at this firm. The person you meet in the consultation is the person who signs the filing and writes the argument in it. Two paralegals work the file.
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What does the fee include, exactly, and where is that written down?
Almost every dispute about legal fees is really a dispute about scope. The number matters far less than the sentence that says what the number buys, and the parts most likely to be argued about later are the ones that only happen if something goes wrong.
How to check Ask for the included list in writing before you pay anything, and read it for the two items people forget to ask about: the response to a Request for Evidence, and what happens if the filing has to be made again. Then ask what is not included, and what would change the quote.
This firm's answer
The fee page publishes the included list for each category, alongside the attorney fee, the government filing fees and the other costs as three separate lines. Read it there rather than here.
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Are the government fees separated from the professional fee?
Government filing fees are set by an agency, they are not revenue for anyone, and they change. A single all-in number hides which part of your money is a fee for work and which part is a payment to the government, which means you cannot compare two quotes at all and you cannot tell what happens when the agency raises a fee.
How to check Ask for the quote as separate lines, and ask when each government fee was last checked against the agency. Every one of those fees is published by the agency itself, so any figure you are given can be verified in a couple of minutes.
This firm's answer
Three lines, always: the attorney fee, the government filing fees, and other costs. The fee page carries the date the government fees were last verified with the agencies.
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How do I verify that this lawyer is licensed and in good standing?
It takes about ninety seconds and almost nobody does it. Every U.S. state publishes a public lookup that shows whether a lawyer is licensed, and most also show the year of admission and any public discipline on the record. It is the one credential on any legal website that is not self-reported.
How to check Find the bar number and the licensing state, then look the lawyer up on that state's board site directly rather than through a link you were given. If a website does not publish a bar number at all, that itself is the answer to the question.
This firm's answer
The license, the state and the bar number are in the footer of every page here, and the credentials block on the about page names the Tennessee board and the address where you can check it.
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What is actually in the written agreement, and do I get it before I pay?
The engagement agreement is the only document in this whole transaction that binds anybody. Everything said in a consultation, everything on a website, and everything in an email is context; the agreement is the deal. A provider who wants money before you have read one is asking you to buy something whose terms you have not seen.
How to check Read it for four things: what work is covered, what it costs and when each part is due, what happens if you stop or if the firm stops, and how your file gets back to you if you leave. Ask for it in writing, and take the time to read it. Nothing about a properly run immigration matter turns on signing today.
This firm's answer
The engagement agreement and the first invoice are sent together, and the agreement itemizes the fee before anyone signs anything.
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What can nobody honestly promise me?
This is the question that sorts the field fastest, because the honest answer is narrow and everyone knows it. An immigration outcome depends on the facts, on the record, on the law in effect when it is decided, and on the discretion of the officer who decides it. Nobody controls those. A provider who promises an approval, an approval rate for your case, or a decision date is promising something they cannot deliver, and the promise itself is the information.
How to check Ask directly what they cannot promise. Then check any published approval figure for what it actually counts: which category, which years, how many cases, and whether the underlying data is something you could look at yourself. A rate the provider calculated from its own unpublished files is not checkable, whoever published it.
This firm's answer
No outcome, no odds for a specific case before the record has been read, and no decision date. The one figure this firm publishes about its own case outcomes is a PERM record taken from a Department of Labor disclosure file. The source is named beside the number, and so is the line saying it counts PERM labor certification filings only.
Ask me these before you ask me anything else.
You are about to spend real money on something you cannot easily undo, and the questions above are how you find out what you are actually buying, from me or from anyone.
Immigration benefits are decided by government officers who apply the law to the record in front of them, and many of them are discretionary. No attorney can promise you an approval, and anyone who does is telling you what you want to hear. What good lawyering controls is whether your case is complete, specific, and internally consistent, so that approving it is the officer's easiest path.
Print this page and take it with you.