The Best Immigration Strategy Starts With Listening

A prospective client told me their last attorney spent the consultation telling them what they should do. I spent ours asking what they wanted.

They'd come to me after a consultation elsewhere. The way they described it, the other attorney had a path in mind within the first few minutes and spent the rest of the call steering them toward it. They left knowing what that attorney thought. They didn't feel like anyone had asked them what they were trying to do.

And that's exactly where I start most consultations. Where do you want to be in three years? What are your priorities? Are you looking to build a long-term future where you are, or do you want to keep other options open? What matters most to you, and what are you not willing to compromise on to get there?

Then we built a plan around the answers.

I don't think that's a trick or a philosophy. In my experience it's just the order that works. The immigration options are what they are. Which one is right depends entirely on what the person is actually trying to do with their life, and I can't know that until I ask.

The same thing is true once someone is a client. Last week I had a meeting with an O-1B client whose case we're preparing. It ran 109 minutes. (I didn't know Zoom's timer rolls over after 100!)

It was one of the longer meetings I've had with a client during case preparation, and it was worth every minute. When someone talks through their own work out loud, they remember things. A credit they'd forgotten. A collaboration that didn't seem important. A way of framing what they do that we hadn't considered. Several of the angles in that case came out of that conversation, not out of the documents.

The strategy is usually in the client's answers. My job is to ask the right questions and listen long enough to hear them.