Automations That Immigration Lawyers Find Useful

The Modern Law Firm series delves into how AI can streamline your law firm — whether it’s by saving you time and money, eliminating mistakes and redundancies or making your workflow more efficient. 

Automation can make our lives easier. Think about your cell phone provider automatically billing your checking account each month or having your air conditioning system turn on before you arrive home. There’s something nice about not having to expend any energy on remembering to complete tasks. 

For immigration lawyers, automation can also simplify the day-to-day tasks that are necessary to filing a case, which can make it easier to complete their jobs. 

Learn more about the automations that are useful to two immigration lawyers.

3 Benefits of Automation for Immigration Law Firms

Immigration cases take time, and for immigration lawyers, it means lots of communication with their clients to assure them that everything is on track. But as they juggle a full caseload, that can fall by the wayside. That’s where automation comes in. 

Here are a few benefits of automation:

It Saves Time

One of the biggest benefits of automation is that it’s a timesaver. It can complete monotonous tasks quickly. Meanwhile, a human worker cannot finish it in the same time. This helps you move through cases more efficiently. 

It Lets You Focus on More Pressing Matters

Since automation tools can save you time, it lets you shift your focus to issues and tasks that require more effort. Artificial intelligence (AI) can’t do everything a human can do, and through automation, you can make those tasks your priority. 

It Makes Your Team More Consistent

Automation tools carry out tasks when a specific action triggers it. For example, if a client requests an informational meeting, they can automatically receive an email that asks them to fill out a questionnaire before they talk to a lawyer. It will do this for every single person who books a meeting. People aren’t always consistent and can forget steps or do things in a different order, which can give some clients a better experience than others. 

3 Automations That Immigration Lawyers Find Useful

Here are the automations that immigration lawyers Lilia Alcaraz, of Alcaraz Tocchini LLP, and Pradeek Susheelan, of Susheelan Law Firm, find useful: 

Sending Client Agreement Forms

When you agree to represent a client, they can automatically receive an agreement so you can start working on their case. “That’s really important to me is to send out the agreements and get them signed electronically,” Alcaraz says. “[We’re] not chasing the client for signatures or dealing with the scanning and mailing.”

Furthermore, not all electronic forms are user-friendly. As Alcaraz explains, some require you to create a login, which might delay your client. And others don’t meet clients where they are. “There are only a few products out there that will send the agreement through SMS,” she adds.

Laying Out Next Steps

Clients may not know the inner workings of the immigration system or even their cases. And their lawyers may have an important deadline, making it so they can’t give clients a breakdown of the next steps in a timely manner. Automations can step in here, too. 

“It follows up with the client until the client [completes a task],” Susheelan says. “As soon as the client has done what is required of them as a first step, it tells them what’s going to happen next… It has helped because the client isn’t now asking us what’s going on.” 

Monitoring Cases Every Day

You may want to check in on each of your cases every day, but the truth is you likely don’t have the time. This means you have to pick and choose where to focus your energy. “[We] cannot check on 400 cases in the pipeline at the same time,” Susheelan says. “The AI is doing that every day, every second. It’s looking at what the client has done.”