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Check that your lawyer is a lawyer
Anyone can put “immigration services” on a door. Every state bar publishes a free register that tells you whether a specific person is licensed, whether the licence is active, and whether they have been disciplined. It takes about thirty seconds and almost nobody knows it is there.
We put it first because it is the one thing on this page that protects you from someone we have never heard of.
Official state bar registers
Search the bar of the state where the attorney says they are licensed. You are checking three things: that the name matches, that the status is active, and that no public discipline is listed.
If they are not a licensed attorney, there is exactly one other thing they can legitimately be: a representative accredited by the Department of Justice, working for a DOJ-recognised organisation. Anyone else, a “notario”, an immigration consultant, a document preparer, a travel agency, cannot lawfully advise you on your case, no matter how confident they sound or how many people they say they have helped.
Directories that search many firms at once
AILA Immigration Lawyer Search ↗
American Immigration Lawyers AssociationSearch AILA members by practice area, language, city, state, country, or ZIP with a radius. Membership signals a practice focused on immigration, but it is not a quality rating and AILA does not vet outcomes.
Immigration Advocates Network legal directory ↗
Immigration Advocates Network / Pro Bono NetThe nonprofit directory this site's free legal-aid listings come from.
The official explanation of who may give immigration legal advice, and how notario fraud works.
EOIR list of pro bono legal service providers ↗
Department of JusticeThe official DOJ list, by immigration court. Authoritative for anyone in removal proceedings.
Recognised organisations and accredited representatives ↗
Department of JusticeThe register of non-attorneys who ARE permitted to represent people before USCIS. If someone is not a licensed attorney, this is the only other thing they can legitimately be.
Firms that publish EB-2 NIW work
We have not verified, evaluated or endorsed any of these, and none of them pays us anything. They appear because they publish substantially about this category and you will find them anyway. Listing them next to the bar registers is more useful than pretending the market does not exist, but check every one against its state bar before you send money.
North America Immigration Law Group (WeGreened) ↗
National practiceHigh-volume EB-1 and EB-2 NIW self-petitions. States that it drafts recommendation letters for clients rather than supplying templates.
Publishes a refund policy on I-140 petitions written into the retainer.
Ellis Porter ↗
National practiceHigh-skilled immigration, including EB-2 NIW self-petitions.
Manifest Law ↗
National practiceEB-2 NIW and EB-1A. Publishes comparison guides between the two categories.
Advertises flat fees.
Colombo Hurd ↗
FloridaEB-2 NIW petitions and RFE responses. Publishes analysis of RFE trends.
Joyce & Associates ↗
Boston, MassachusettsApplies the Matter of Dhanasar framework to STEM, research and clinical profiles.
Tadmor & Tadmor, LLP ↗
Worcester and Newton Center, MassachusettsFull-service employment and family immigration, including NIW.
Immigration Solutions LLC ↗
Boston, MassachusettsAdvanced-degree and self-petition national interest waivers.
About advertised approval rates. Several firms publish figures like “99% approval”. USCIS put the denial rate for this category near 45% in FY2025. Both can be true at once, and the reason is the point: a firm that screens who it accepts is reporting on a selected sample, not on the category. It may well mean they are good at choosing cases, it does not mean your odds become 99% by hiring them.
Worth asking any firm directly: do you decline cases, and what share? A firm that never declines is quoting you a number about its marketing, not about your petition.
Why published outcomes mislead →Three different things, and they are not interchangeable
Free nonprofit help
1,275 organisations, most of them free, staffed by licensed attorneys or DOJ-accredited representatives. Start here if cost is the constraint.
Search the directory →Our bar-verified marketplace
Attorneys whose licence we checked ourselves. They pay us flat fees only and never a share of yours. You publish a redacted case and they propose.
See who is listed →The wider market
Everyone else, including the firms above. Unverified by us. The bar registers on this page are how you check them yourself.
Work out which path first →NIWFile is not a law firm and this is not legal advice. Bar lookup URLs are the bars’ own and change occasionally, if one is dead, search for “[state] bar attorney lookup” rather than assuming the register is gone. We receive no payment from any firm, directory or organisation named on this page.