How to choose a right lawyer or an attorney
If you, your relative or employee are in a situation where they face administrative responsibility, expulsion from Russia or a ban on entry, you should immediately decide whether or not to contact a lawyer who focused migration issues.
You should understand that you have only ONE chance to cancel the court order on imposing a fine of 1 million rubles, cancel the decision on ban on to enter Russia or the decision on administrative expulsion from Russia.
If suddenly you were unlucky and to abolish the expulsion you turned to a fraudster or a housing lawyer who had promised a pack of lies, but could not defend your interests, you can no longer go to court with a complaint.
Every citizen or organization may apply to the court only once and only in strict time limits established by law.
It is almost impossible to file a complaint against the expulsion order with the phrase “the first lawyer was a fraudster and deceived me”. Although we have examples of such won cases.
You need to quickly understand and accept one fact - you need a specialized lawyer or a lawyer for migration issues.
When choosing a lawyer or an attourney, pay attention to the following aspects:
- Experience as a migration lawyer
- Cases of attorney for migration
- Specialization of the law office
- Age of the law office
- Calculations and payment of legal services
- Report on the actions of a lawyer
- Testimonials about the Lawyer on migration issues
And now more:
Migration lawyer experience
A lawyer or attorney for migration must be experienced. The experience of a lawyer in matters of migration cannot and should not consist only of the experience of disputes with the FMS. The work experience of such a lawyer should include work experience in the field of formatting and processing documents of foreign citizens. Employees of the FMS, employees of the personnel departments and accounting departments of organizations often know much more about the order of registration of documents of foreign citizens than most lawyers.
But without knowledge of the procedural rules that lawyers and attorneys are better at, knowledge in the field of registration of foreign personnel is also not very useful.
Bottom line: the experience of a lawyer on migration issues should include work experience with labor migration - receiving, formatting, processing foreign personnel in the organization (personnel officers and inspectors of registration of the Administration for Migration Issues), experience in checking such documents (inspector of the Federal Migration Service), issuing permits - a patent or permission to work, as well as Temporary residence permit and Permanent residence permit.
Keep in mind - this experience is definitely not among university graduates or novice lawyers.
Moreover, such legal experience should be constantly maintained. Between 2014 and 2018, more than 120 significant changes were made in the area of the migration legislation. The forms and order of paperwork were changed, the grounds for the prohibition on entry and the terms of such a ban were changed, the liability of legal entities for migration offenses was tightened, the grounds for liability were expanded tenfold, the fines and periods of entry ban for foreign citizens were increased and, of course, introduced and criminal liability was tightened.
Migration Attorney’s Cases
Case is a buzzword, actually means the case that the lawyer held and won. Such advocacy victories are actually confirmed not by the words of a lawyer about millions of cases won and billions of canceled fines, but by court decisions on the abolition of the entry ban, resolutions and rulings on administrative issues. If a lawyer participated in the process, the court will indicate this in the first part of the judicial act.
Example:
It rarely happens that the court does not indicate a lawyer among the participants in the court hearing. In such a case, the lawyer may prove his participation in the process by legal correspondence, definitions, subpoenas in this case or other documents.
Law Office Specialization
When choosing a migration lawyer, pay attention to specialization. The specialization of such a lawyer can be either only a migration law, or another 2-3 related legal areas - for example: labor and administrative law.
A lawyer can hardly simultaneously deal with issues of migration and land law, since these legal areas practically do not overlap.
A specialized migration lawyer needs to be chosen as a doctor - in order to cure your ear, you do not need to go to the urologist.
A large number of legal specializations can be found in large bureaus and colleges, but every lawyer in them deals with 2-3 areas. But the prices in such offices are 20-50 percent more.
Age of law office
It would seem, why does the age of a legal organization or a bar association is so important?
In fact, it is important because litigation can lasts for several months or even several years.
So, for example, the appeal of the decision of the district court on bringing the construction company to justice took us almost 2 years from the moment when an administrative violation was discovered.
We canceled the administrative responsibility of the construction company in the Supreme Court of Russia, but the litigation took almost 2 years, for each fact of administrative responsibility about 15 meetings were held. Breaks between meetings - from 3 weeks to 5 months. The customer (a large construction organization) at a certain moment, of course, became nervous, but in the end got the result - the complete abolition of administrative responsibility and the cancellation of 2 million rubles of fines.
The trial of the abolition of the decision on the ban on entry for foreign nationals can also last long enough. In our practice, there were 9 months from the moment of going to court until the decision was made.
And if suddenly you turned to one-day lawyers, for whom the main thing is to get your money, without a desire to fulfill obligations to you, then there is a high probability that after paying for services you will no longer see them.
Calculations and payment of legal services
The amount of remuneration must necessarily be reflected in the contract (witha a lawyer) or agreement (with an attorney). Payment for a lawyer can be in cash either at the organization’s cash office or non-cash through a card or through a bank to the organization’s account. When paying through a bank, you will be given an order confirming payment of services under the contract. When paying by cash to the cashier, be sure you got a receipt or a check.
A document confirming the fact of payment for a lawyer or an attorney may be needed at any time.
For example, once a citizen of Azerbaijan appealed to us, who had been appointed for administrative expulsion from Russia, she turned to a lawyer, but was deceived. Due to the lack of a contract and payment documents, it was very difficult to restore the time limits for filing an appeal.
Testimonials about the lawyer on Migration issues
Feedback on a lawyer or a law office in the field of migration is also an important factor, but not always such reviews reflect the real achievements and successes of a lawyer.
Moreover, our advice - say no to testimonials !!!
Reviews of lawyers on the Internet are far from true, and some pseudo-legal (fraudulent) organizations even simply wind them up or buy them.
More than a half of our clients from among individuals seek a lawyer or an attorney on migration issues to lift the ban on entry, deportation or expulsion after the actual departure. That is, a foreign citizen had been expelled to his homeland, or from his homeland he could not come to Russia, and he decided to find a lawyer on migration issues. There are only 2 options (when a foreigner himself is abroad) to find such a lawyer: through relatives / acquaintances or on the Internet.
Of course, it is advisable to send your friend to the immigration lawyer's office, but friends may be busy, and the Internet knows everything. Rather, the Internet knows what scammers need.
And scammers need to gain your trust and get your money. Including through false reviews.
For example, on one site we found just such nonsense:
You should know - you need to believe only those reviews that are left familiar to you personally by people who can be double-checked or that are backed up by real court documents.
These rules for the selection of a lawyer can be applied to lawyers of any field you need.
If you need a lawyer in sports law, you can replace the phrase “migration lawyer” with the legal sphere you need.
Guided by these simple rules, you will be able to choose the best shared construction attorney / traffic accident attorney to solve your problem.
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