“Big Law’s Immigration Advocates by Jayanth K. Krishnan, Megan Riley, & Vitor M. Dias” Generates Discussion
A previous Immigration Article of the Day (Big Law’s Immigration Advocates by Jayanth K. Krishnan, Megan Riley, & Vitor M. Dias) is generating a fair amount of commentary on the ImmProf listserve. One of the author’s articles, Jay Krishnan (Indiana-Bloomington), among others, weighed in.
Here is the abstract of the article:
To supplement these quantitative results, interviews with Big Law and non-Big Law lawyers were conducted. As this study makes clear, it is not that those from Big Law firms are necessarily smarter or better at understanding immigration than non-Big Law practitioners. Indeed, there are certainly those lawyers in the latter cohort who do well in the appellate courts. Still, because of their enormous resource advantages, Big Law lawyers, on average, perform better because they have the luxury of selecting cases they believe are more likely to win. Additionally, Big Law firms have appellate specialists. They also have available personnel who can readily assist on these cases, as well as access to diverse research technologies and a keen familiarity with the federal courts’ norms – all of which are vital in preparing Big Law lawyers during the appeals process.
Of course, Big Law firms are only involved in a fraction of federal appellate deportation cases. Nevertheless, their relatively high win rate, and the reasons behind it, have serious implications for how immigrants who do not have this type of representation are able to obtain justice.
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For additional discussion of the Article on Science Blog, click here.
KJ