Saturday, March 18, 2023
Big Law Immigration Advocates
Jayanth K. Krishnan (Indiana-Maurer; Academic google), Megan Riley (Indiana-Maurer) and Vitor M. Dias (Butler), Big Law Immigration Advocates2024 U.Ill. L. Rev. __ :
This study examines attorneys working in federal appeals courts representing immigrants seeking relief from deportation. By analyzing more than 23,000 appellate cases during the Trump and Obama administrations, the investigation reveals crucial findings. For starters, there was a statistically significant difference in the success rates of attorneys working pro bono and coming from the largest and most profitable “Big Law” corporate firms compared to attorneys working in other immigration practice settings, usually more specialized.
Specifically, during the Trump Administration, Big Law attorneys won at nearly three times the rate of non-Big Law attorneys in federal appeals courts. During the Obama administration, Big Law attorneys earned three times as much.
To complement these quantitative results, interviews with Big Law and non-Big Law attorneys were conducted. As this study makes clear, it’s not that those at big law firms are necessarily smarter or better at understanding immigration than non-big law professionals. In fact, there are certainly lawyers in the latest cohort who do well on appellate courts. Still, due to their enormous resource advantages, Big Law attorneys, on average, perform better because they can afford to select the cases they believe are most likely to win. Also, large law firms have appellate specialists. They also have staff on hand who can assist in these cases, as well as access to various investigative technologies and a strong familiarity with federal court rules, all of which are vital to preparing Big Law attorneys for the appellate process.
Of course, the big law firms are only involved in a fraction of federal appeal deportation cases. However, its relatively high win rate, and the reasons behind it, have serious implications for how immigrants who do not have this type of representation can obtain justice.
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2023/03/big-laws-immigration-advocates.html
