Legal Software for Immigration Law

Written by Shrisha Sapkota
Written by Shrisha Sapkota

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case management software, practice management software, legal accounting software, legaltech, technology for lawyers, case management, immigration, london, united kingdomcase management software, practice management software, legal accounting software, legaltech, technology for lawyers, case management, immigration, london, united kingdom

Introduction:


Immigration law deals with legal rights, duties, and obligations of aliens[1] (foreigners). It also provides means by which certain aliens can become naturalised citizens with full rights of citizenship. Immigration law determines who may enter a country, how long they may stay and when they must leave. Immigration policies deal with regulations determining what may deny or grant aliens visas to leave and re-enter a country.[2]


Firms dealing with immigration laws deal with a lot of important documents, deadlines, and a lot of cooperation from their clients’ end. Hence, using a legal case management software will allow attorneys to work more efficiently with their clients.[3]


What is an Immigration Law Software?

Immigration law software is a customised legal practice management software that helps immigration attorneys manage their firms. It includes specific features, like custom forms and templates for cases dealing with employer compliance with immigration laws for their employees, and for individuals or families seeking citizenship.[4]


Immigration law requires the submission of extensive forms to federal agencies. This used to mean hours of tedious data entry, done mostly by hand. Now though, immigration software has made this part of the practice easier than ever before. Technology has allowed for the preparation of these forms to be almost fully automated, leaving more time for the work that really matters.[5]


But immigration law software does more than just simplify the completion of forms! It provides a user-friendly interface for organising cases, establishing timelines, and delegating work to team members.[6] It can also double as a robust immigration case management software.[7]


Immigration law software usually comes as part of a customizable legal practice management system. It acts as a single source of truth for immigration attorneys who are managing a variety of cases for corporations, individuals, and families. It is capable of running almost every aspect of your firm.[8]


Why Use Immigration Law Software?

Running an immigration law firm can be difficult work.[9] Immigration lawyers deal with rapidly-changing policies, increasingly complex legal requirements, and tremendous community needs. Many of those who most need your help might live in rural or remote areas, or find it difficult to pay standard legal rates.[10]


So, how can you serve your clients, expand access to justice, and stay on top of a whirlwind of policy changes, while continuing to grow and improve your practice?[11]


Luckily, like in many other fields, technology has made everything a bit easier. Using it effectively can lead to increased business and reduced costs.[12] Technology can increase the efficiency of law firms that handle immigration cases. It boils down to this—less time spent on each case equals more cases which equals more impact. Rather than doing mindless clerical work, attorneys can spend more of their valuable time helping clients.[13]


Also, client cases require vast amounts of attention and commitment to navigate the immigration system. Even a modest mistake in a visa, status adjustment, or naturalisation/green card application can lead to long delays, outright denials, and even deportation. So, using a patchwork of incomplete manual tools is not only ineffective, it creates risk for your clients and wastes your precious time. What you need instead is end to end immigration law software.[14]


Immigration law firm software helps lawyers solve these intractable problems.[15]


Features of Immigration Law Software

Some of the most important features of immigration law software include making and sending personalised list of questions to every client; organising all cases and delegating tasks to team members or co-workers; making, updating and editing forms according to the requirement of every case; saving client’s and cases’ information on a cloud that is secure but can also be easily accessed by attorneys or clients from anywhere when needed; and responding to client’s queries and concerns immediately through automated responses among other things. All of these are discussed in detail below:


Curating and Sending Personalised Questionnaires to Clients

In the past, immigration cases began with clients writing down an exhaustive array of personal information – some of which might not even be relevant to their case. Clients were also required to hand in a lot of documents – from citizenship status to marital details to past employment – making this process quite lengthy. Now, however, immigration case management software makes it possible for attorneys to streamline the information collection process by sending personalised questionnaires to their clients. These questionnaires allow lawyers to choose which specific questions to ask on a case by case basis, meaning that clients only have to provide information that is needed. Questionnaires also come professionally branded with a firm’s logo, and have multilingual functionality so they can easily be toggled to whichever language a client is most comfortable with. These dynamic features greatly reduce the time and effort needed to gather pertinent client information.[16]


Organise and Delegate Cases to Staff

Immigration software can serve as a fully functional legal case management tool. This means that it often includes an array of useful administrative features, which allow immigration law firms to sort their work in an intuitive fashion. Cases can be assigned to particular members of a team, so each individual knows what they are responsible for. Time sensitive tasks can be given due dates which will trigger automated reminders as deadlines approach. Immigration lawyer software also allows lawyers to write notes for each particular case, in order to keep track of useful details. All this comes in a single, centralised location, making for an easy and efficient workflow. Because of this all in one functionality, practitioners do not have to switch between platforms while working, which makes things simpler.[17]


Create and Edit Forms with Ease

Legal immigration software handles both the completion of forms and the selection of forms – a process that can be complicated. As previously noted, technology has helped automate the job of completing forms for immigration proceedings. Much of this is due to the advent of smart forms, which can populate long, complicated documents with client information in a single click. The data is received through the questionnaires, stored in a digital profile, and matched to forms as needed through finely-tuned software. These smart forms feature complicated logic that can determine the exact array of forms to prepare based on the details of the case. Reputable services include every form an immigration practitioner might need – even the most obscure. In special cases, attorneys can also create and edit forms from scratch for ease and flexibility.[18]


Store Client Information Securely on the Cloud

Another benefit of immigration case management software is cloud-based storage, which makes it possible for lawyers to access their cases from anywhere. Rather than having data stored on in-house servers or in physical form, immigration software provides firms a secure home for their cases online. Accessible only through password-protected logins, which can be issued to multiple team members, immigration software provides attorneys with a user-friendly repository of client information. With this emerging technology, different individuals in an immigration law firm can access case information no matter where they are.[19] Cloud-based case management software gives you a central hub for all your information, keeping it simultaneously secure and accessible to team members who need it.


[20] Attorneys should make sure to look for a service that employs a highly-trusted cloud encryption protocol to ensure that data is being handled with the utmost care.[21]


Intake Management

Technology is helping our economy shift to provide immediate answers and rapid fulfilment of customers’ desires. But the legal industry has largely ignored this trend. Of course, legal work is complex and highly regulated and can’t just be hawked like gadgets online. But there are several tools and techniques that can give potential clients the kind of rapid response and ease of onboarding they increasingly expect. When someone is looking for an immigration lawyer, they will often reach out to several possibilities. The first one who responds to them has the best chance of retaining them as a client. Intake management in legal immigration software is the key to mastering this stage. It can help you send automated text messages, begin gathering information immediately and track your leads to ensure that you are following up with the people who are looking for your help.[22]


Improve Communications

Immigration law software centralises your data and acts as your business’s source of truth. Get everyone on the same page using the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) features to schedule consultations, log interactions, tag emails, and onboard clients easily with custom intakes and questionnaires. It has never been easier to add notes and secure messages to share updates on a case and make information available to team members. It even makes filling out forms collaboratively in real-time between staff and clients easy for a more efficient form-filling process. Moreover, through legal immigration software, lawyers and law firms can enable SMS messaging as an add-on to manage and automate text messages directly within the system.


Additionally, legal immigration software makes other common immigration practice management activities a cinch, by supporting easy to use:[23]

  • Case Management: Case intake screens capture well-organised client information and set in motion workflows with accurately prepared forms and precise follow-up events. Case status, chronology, deadline, and alert reports enable you to support each case’s upcoming activities.[24]
  • Legal Calendaring: Updates lawyers’ schedules and makes their calendar visible to anyone that needs it, including the client. When unexpected situations make changes inevitable, legal immigration software makes it easy to alert any impacted parties and proceed accordingly.[25]
  • Time and Billing Activities: Intuitive and accurate time and activity tracking. Automatically generate professional, templated invoices that are calculated automatically to please any loyal client.[26]

What solutions can an effective immigration law case management software provide?

With so many legal immigration softwares available in the market, it can be difficult for lawyers and law firms to settle on a single one that would meet all the requirements of their law practices. Listed below are some key solutions that an effective immigration law practice software should provide:


Operational Efficiency

An efficient legal immigration software will customise case workflows, monitor any necessary filing deadlines, and digitise repetitive processes via machine learning and robotic process automation (RPA) to automate mundane, time-consuming processes, saving huge amounts of time.[27]


Data Security and Compliance

As law firms are dealing with a slew of new immigration procedures, data privacy and protection laws are also getting more strict as well.  An immigration law firm software tool should ensure GDPR/CCPA compliance and include detailed user and access management protocols and multi-factor authentication to protect applicant data security.[28]


Prospect Conversion

The combination of a significant inflow of clients within the remote work landscape of today makes it vital that legal immigration office software solutions include a cloud-based central repository that is accessible for both prospects and staff. It should provide global case management support for law firms, corporations, and immigration applicants wherever they may be.[29]


Calendaring

There are a lot of dates and deadlines immigration lawyers and law firms have to keep up with. An immigration law forms software will make tracking meetings, depositions, court dates and deadlines effortless. It can create deadlines and set reminders for tasks or enter time as you finish a task. It will also help organise, visualise, and execute complex firm projects, matters, and litigation.


Legal accounting

Immigration management software always includes all of the accounting features needed by lawyers to run firms. It can take care of all aspects of accounting and billing that are required while tackling legal immigration cases. Plus you can do all of that from a single software, instead of relying on links between third-party accounting packages.


Reporting

Reporting and analytics features give real-time insight into a firm’s productivity and profitability. Immigration law practice software can help visualise data, view custom reports and graphical representations of billing hours, revenues, and invoices, among other things that will help law firms realise what is and is not working for them and update their working process accordingly.

Good Law Software is one of the best immigration software for lawyers as it includes several features such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools designed specifically for immigration practices. CRM features include website integration, lead reminders, lead tracking and management tools, and email templates. It also provides cloud-based immigration practice management software for law firms worldwide along with legal calendaring, legal billing etc.


References

[1] https://www.practicepanther.com/blog/legal-billing-software-for-immigration-attorneys/

[2] https://www.practicepanther.com/blog/legal-billing-software-for-immigration-attorneys/

[3] https://www.practicepanther.com/blog/legal-billing-software-for-immigration-attorneys/

[4] https://www.amicusattorney.com/solutions/immigration-law-software/

[5]https://www.docketwise.com/content/posts/2020-02-07-how-immigration-software-can-make-law-firms-more-efficient/

[6]https://www.docketwise.com/content/posts/2020-02-07-how-immigration-software-can-make-law-firms-more-efficient/

[7]https://www.docketwise.com/content/posts/2020-02-07-how-immigration-software-can-make-law-firms-more-efficient/

[8] https://www.amicusattorney.com/solutions/immigration-law-software/

[9]https://www.docketwise.com/content/posts/2020-02-07-how-immigration-software-can-make-law-firms-more-efficient/

[10] https://www.filevine.com/blog/5-new-technologies-every-immigration-lawyer-should-know/

[11] https://www.filevine.com/blog/5-new-technologies-every-immigration-lawyer-should-know/

[12]https://www.docketwise.com/content/posts/2020-02-07-how-immigration-software-can-make-law-firms-more-efficient/

[13]https://www.docketwise.com/content/posts/2020-02-07-how-immigration-software-can-make-law-firms-more-efficient/

[14] https://www.amicusattorney.com/solutions/immigration-law-software/

[15] https://www.filevine.com/blog/5-new-technologies-every-immigration-lawyer-should-know/

[16]https://www.docketwise.com/content/posts/2020-02-07-how-immigration-software-can-make-law-firms-more-efficient/

[17]https://www.docketwise.com/content/posts/2020-02-07-how-immigration-software-can-make-law-firms-more-efficient/

[18]https://www.docketwise.com/content/posts/2020-02-07-how-immigration-software-can-make-law-firms-more-efficient/

[19]https://www.docketwise.com/content/posts/2020-02-07-how-immigration-software-can-make-law-firms-more-efficient/

[20] https://www.filevine.com/blog/5-new-technologies-every-immigration-lawyer-should-know/

[21] https://www.filevine.com/blog/5-new-technologies-every-immigration-lawyer-should-know/

[22] https://www.filevine.com/blog/5-new-technologies-every-immigration-lawyer-should-know/

[23] https://www.amicusattorney.com/solutions/immigration-law-software/

[24] https://www.amicusattorney.com/solutions/immigration-law-software/

[25] https://www.amicusattorney.com/solutions/immigration-law-software/

[26] https://www.amicusattorney.com/solutions/immigration-law-software/

[27] https://mitratech.com/resource-hub/blog/immigration-reform-immigration-law-software/

[28] https://mitratech.com/resource-hub/blog/immigration-reform-immigration-law-software/

[29] https://mitratech.com/resource-hub/blog/immigration-reform-immigration-law-software/

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