Law Student Division
Student Lawyer

Hot Practice

BY LISA STANSKY

If you want an area of practice with high ratings on the soul satisfaction scale, consider a career in immigration law.

"One of the main pluses [of immigration law] is that you're working with individuals, so when you accomplish your goal ... you immediately see some personal rewards," says Anna Williams Shavers, co-chair of the immigration committee of the American Bar Association Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice.

"It's a very hands-on kind of practice, and you get a lot of hands-on [experience] very quickly in the field," says Neil Dornbaum, former chair of the immigration committee of the ABA General Practice, Solo, and Small Firm Section.

Better yet, you can work on immigration matters in a variety of settings, ranging from one-lawyer shops to mammoth firms to legal services programs to corporate offices.

In her 25 years of practice, Carol Wolchok, director of the ABA Center for Immigration Law and Representation, worked in several of these venues. During that time, she has maintained a focus on immigration law as a legal services lawyer, a lawyer in private practice, director of a national program on asylum law, a law school clinic instructor, and now with the ABA, where she has focused on policy issues for the last 13 years.

"Immigration is a field that in many respects has it all," Wolchok says, ticking off the avenues open to aspiring lawyers: immigration law, business law, large-firm practice, solo and small-firm practice, commercial work, litigation, civil liberties, and human rights advocacy.

A good immigration lawyer also has a personal arsenal of diverse talents and skills. The job requires strong personal communication skills, a flair for regulatory practice, and a deft touch in court. The law is still volatile, which keeps the practice intellectually demanding and exciting.

By way of example, Shavers points to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which places tighter constraints on legal as well as illegal aliens seeking to remain in the United States. Lawyers are still wrestling over whether some changes wrought by the law may be applied retroactively, she says.

Perhaps the highest-profile aspect of the practice concerns refugee and asylum issues, yet Shavers notes that there are job opportunities for students who want to incorporate an immigration angle into a business-oriented practice. Working on employment-related visa work for corporate clients is one fruitful area, as U.S. companies seek to hire talent from abroad to work stateside.

Even if you don't set out to practice immigration law, there's a good chance that it will work its way into your practice, especially if you delve into employment law.

"I don't think you can be a well-rounded labor and employment lawyer unless you have some sense of how the immigration laws work," says Kathleen Vagt, co-chair of the immigration committee of the ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law. "Employers have to know and care about the immigration status of their work force," Vagt says.

Immigration law found Vagt rather than the reverse-she encountered immigration law issues earlier in her career when she signed on with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C. (Her current position does not involve immigration work.) At the firm, her clients included large companies that often sought to relocate highly skilled employees from other nations. She had to negotiate the maze of immigration requirements for the workers, along with their families and possibly a contingent of cooks, nannies, and the like.

You may find yourself representing immigrants without actually practicing immigration law. That's what Miguel Allen Hull has done as an associate with a Maryland firm with a general practice serving a largely Latin American immigrant client base.

"Most of my day is spent with Latino immigrants," says Hull, former co-chair of the immigration law subcommittee of the ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. "I speak more Spanish in the office than English."

Hull's casework embraces workers' compensation, criminal defense, personal injury suits, and auto accidents. Even so, immigration issues crop up all the time. "Certain [criminal] convictions could lead to a person's deportation if he's not a U.S. citizen," Hull explains, noting that he has to be extremely cautious when defending aliens in criminal cases.

Hull's experience might serve as one blueprint for those who want to immerse themselves in immigration law. A former social worker, Hull spent time before he entered law school at the University of North Carolina with an agency on the Texas border, assisting those entering the United States from Mexico. When his school canceled the only course in immigration law, he worked out an agreement so he could enroll in a similar class offered by a nearby law school. He defended immigrants as a student practitioner with his school's criminal law clinic. Before securing his J.D., he spent a summer counseling immigrants.

So sign up for that course in immigration law, and a clinic if it's available, to get a grounding in immigration issues before you leave law school. Then check out myriad resources available to you, many of them offered by the ABA.

Wolchok points to seminars on immigration law offered by the ABA each year in Washington, D.C. Then there's ProBAR (the ABA South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project), which assists teams of students from U.S. law schools to travel to the Texas border to handle asylum cases.

"The whole thing is designed to have people in court doing representation in a few days," Wolchok says. ProBAR also offers paid and unpaid summer employment opportunities for law students. Wolchok suggests students contact Meredith Linsky or Ilyce Schugall directly at ProBAR at 956-425-9231, or at probartx@worldnet.att.net. There's also the ABA Center for Immigration Law and Representation at 202-662-1005. See the accompanying article for references to other ABA resources.

The ABA Immigration Pro Bono Development Project/Bar Activation Program also awarded more than $76,000 in grant money this year to various programs that work with immigrants. Numerous bar associations were grant recipients, along with organizations such as the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami and the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center in Washington, D.C.

Information-and maybe an internship or a job-is just a call or a mouse click away. As Dornbaum says, the rewards are personal as well as professional. "It's a really feel-good, people-friendly kind of practice."

Lisa Stansky is a lawyer and freelance writer in New Orleans.

Resources on Immigration Law

A wealth of immigration resources is at your fingertips, many of them at the American Bar Association's web site. One good place to start: the ABA Coordinating Committee on Immigration Law and Center for Immigration Law and Representation at www.abanet.org/publicserv/immigration.html.

Then there is the ABA Immigration Pro Bono Development Proj-ect/Bar Activation Program at www.abanet.org/immigprobono/ home.html. The web site has links to other immigration-related sites, plus tips on how those in the legal community can help immigrants.

Now that you've educated yourself, check out various ABA sections and committees with an interest in immigration law. The Section of Labor and Employment Law has an immigration law committee, www.abanet.org/labor/committee.html. By joining the section for $8 a year, you'll get The Labor Lawyer and Labor and Employment Law News, plus a discount on other publications.

There's also the immigration and nationality committee of the ABA Section of International Law and Practice, on the web at www.abanet.org/intlaw/divisions/public/immigration.html. By joining the section at the student rate of $15, you can sign up for the committee and receive subscriptions to International Law News and The International Lawyer.

The ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice has a committee on immigration and naturalization. Visit the section's web site at www.abanet.org/adminlaw/home.html. Periodicals included with the student membership rate of $10 are Administrative & Regulatory Law News and the Administrative Law Review.

You may also want to look at the ABA General Practice, Solo, and Small Firm Section, which has an immigration law committee. Look up the section and its committees at www.abanet.org/genpractice/committees/committee.html. For $5 in membership dues, students receive GP Solo & Small Firm Lawyer magazine and Solo newsletter.

To join any ABA section, call 800-285-2221.