For some time now, there has been a trend towards treating the practice of corporate immigration law as a commodity rather than a professional service. Faced with shrinking budgets, many HR departments now consider primarily the bottom line when deciding who will act on their behalf in corporate immigration matters.

If one assumes that legal services in the field of corporate immigration law are a homogeneous commodity, with all law firms offering identical services, it is logical to choose the service provider that offers the lowest price. However, in reality, the quality of legal services varies greatly from firm to firm.

At the high end of the range, a lawyer will personally prepare an individual immigration filing and will not delegate a substantial proportion of the work to a paralegal or legal assistant. At the low end of the range, a lawyer will supervise up to 12 paralegals/assistants (who perform virtually all of the work) and will do only a basic review of the filing before signing it.

Knowing that the quality of legal services varies so greatly, why do many HR departments continue to make decisions based primarily on cost? The reason is simple: in corporate immigration matters, the decision maker is separate and distinct from the person receiving the benefit of the lawyer’s services.

HR professionals do not retain corporate immigration lawyers on their own behalf; they retain them on behalf of their employees. While the priority of the individual employee may be to have the best legal representation, the priority of many HR departments is to stay within its budget even if the legal representation received is less than ideal. As long as the employee eventually obtains the immigration benefit sought, it does not matter if he or she encounters problems that could have been avoided with more comprehensive legal representation. Although this trend is likely continue, it should be discouraged.

The practice of law is considered a profession because it requires skill; corporate immigration law is no different. If the market demands that all corporate immigration law firms match the fees of these “visa factories,” they will have no choice but to adopt the same mass production business model and the quality of representation in this field of law will deteriorate.

In addition, immigration is a very important and potentially life-changing process for many employees. An employer who provides inadequate legal representation to its employees (especially where they are not given any choice in the matter) will encounter increased employee dissatisfaction, which will adversely affect employee retention (especially when the employee acquires lawful permanent residence and is no longer bound to the employer).

For the above reasons, HR departments should resist the urge to retain their corporate immigration lawyer primarily based on cost. Where this is not an option, the following alternatives may be considered:

1. Utilizing the services of a second law firm that can act in cases involving high-value employees; or
2. Offering the employee the ability to retain their own lawyer, provided that they are willing to pay the additional cost of such representation.

By providing higher quality representation in important cases or by giving employees the ability to retain a lawyer of their own choosing (at their own cost), HR departments can bolster employee satisfaction without a significant increase in their operating costs.