Free guide for immigration firms
Most firms know they need to evaluate AI. Few have a process for doing it well.
Without one, attorneys sit through the wrong demos, miss the security questions that matter, and let trials expire without a decision. This guide gives you the process: what to ask vendors, what to require, and how to run a trial your team will use. Written for practicing immigration attorneys, not software buyers.
Preview the guide below ↓Published by Visalaw AI. Vendor questions developed with input from Greg Siskind.
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Chapter 1 preview · Firm readiness
The most useful question is not which AI to buy. It is what you would hire AI to do. The guide opens with a workflow audit you can run with your team in an hour, before the first vendor call.
“We think this will cut RFE response drafting time by 40%. Let’s find out.”
Do this with your team, not alone. Count attorney and paralegal hours each week. Research, drafting, RFE responses, document review: anything that recurs is on the table.
Ask where time disappears and which tasks run longer than they should. Replace “increased efficiency” with a number, like drafting a complex employment-based memo in two hours instead of six.
Some tasks follow the same structure every time. Others turn on the facts of the case and the judgment of the attorney handling it.
H-1B support letters that follow a predictable structure. The same USCIS regulation lookups. Standard RFE responses. These are strong candidates for AI assistance.
High-variation work, like asylum strategy or removal defense, depends on attorney judgment. You are not trying to automate everything. You are looking for the share of work AI can handle well enough to free real attorney capacity.
Firms that get the most out of an evaluation come in with a hypothesis. Flat-fee billing makes the case direct: an hour saved goes to the next case at the same price.
“I use AI tools daily in my practice and see roughly 10-to-1 time savings on drafting workflows. For immigration attorneys billing flat fees, that efficiency translates directly to capacity.”
Greg Siskind, Siskind Susser
Chapter 1 also covers the firm-size question, signs your firm is ready, and the economics of flat-fee practice.
Get the Full Guide →Appendix A preview · Readiness self-assessment
Being AI-curious and being ready to evaluate are different things. Answer the five questions from the guide’s self-assessment. It takes about a minute.
Chapter 2 preview · Understanding what you’re buying
A chatbot that answers intake questions is AI. So is a model that drafts a 40-page extraordinary ability petition. Evaluating them as if they were the same product costs time and leads to the wrong decision. Select a category to see where it fits.
The one-prompt problem
A one-prompt system takes one input and returns one output. Long documents hit the ceiling on what a single prompt can process, so they come back truncated or shallow.
A multi-prompt system generates each section through its own prompt, drawing on the client’s exhibits, the case inputs and the immigration law library. If the vendor doesn’t know what you’re asking, that tells you something.
Chapter 2 also explains what “built on immigration law” should mean, and defines the terms vendors will use in a demo.
Get the Full Guide →Chapter 2 preview · Retrieval-augmented generation
Most serious legal AI platforms search a library first, then write from what they retrieve. That is the difference between “here’s what I think immigration law says” and “here’s what the current USCIS Policy Manual says, with the citation.” Pick a failure mode to see where it breaks.
TPS eligibility for Venezuelan nationalsFailure modes
The guide includes four RAG questions to ask in every demo, and a glossary of the terms vendors use.
Get the Full Guide →Chapter 3 preview · Security, ethics and compliance
Every vendor will say their platform is secure. Treat that as background until you have asked specific questions and received specific answers. Rule 1.6 applies the moment client data enters an AI system.
Confidentiality comes down to three technical facts about how a product is built.
If yes, client information improves a product other people use. That is a confidentiality problem the moment privileged material enters the system.
United States v. Heppner (S.D.N.Y. 2026). Judge Rakoff held that documents a defendant generated with a consumer AI tool were never privileged, and ordered them produced.
Consumer AI platforms run content moderation in which flagged conversations are reviewed by staff. Asylum, trafficking and politically sensitive removal cases can trigger that review.
A person outside your firm reading your client’s details is likely a confidentiality breach.
Many platforms retain inputs and outputs by default. Unless the vendor commits to no-retention in the contract, client information may sit in a shared environment.
Verify it. Don’t rely on website language. Get it in writing.
The July 2024 opinion sets out how the Model Rules apply to AI. Four matter most before you sign.
Appendix C preview
Developed with input from Greg Siskind, immigration attorney and co-author of The AI-Ready Law Firm (ABA Publishing). Ask every vendor on your shortlist, in writing where possible.
20questions in five areas
Chapter 5 preview · Finding, vetting and selecting a vendor
Most vendor demos are built to make the product look good on easy cases. Your job is to steer the demo toward your actual work, and to notice what the answers leave out.
Six things a vendor might say. Call each one.
“Who are the legal experts behind this product?”
A serious vendor answers with names: actual attorneys, firms and practice credentials.Statements are illustrative, not quotes from any vendor.
Chapters 4, 6 and 7 preview · Plan, trial, implementation
Most evaluations stall for the same reason: no plan before the demo. A firm gets excited, starts a trial, lets it expire, and is no closer to a decision. Step through the sequence the guide recommends.
Chapter 7 · AI maturity stages
The biggest implementation risk is a good tool that two attorneys adopt and everyone else ignores. The guide maps three stages of firm maturity. Select the one that sounds like you.
The full guide includes the planning worksheet, the trial planning template, and how to answer the objections you will hear from partners.
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