Once I focused, everything became easier

When we opened up our doors in 2007, I thought that we would be lawyers for immigrants. That we would handle personal injury, wills - all these different kinds of cases for immigrants. That we would fight the good fight. It didn’t really work out that way. Pretty soon, it became obvious that the real need was within immigration law, which is where immigrants were constantly getting tripped up.

The shift in our approach started In 2012 when I signed up two cases that almost bankrupted me.

The first involved an individual who had been accused of a crime. I took that case on pro bono.

The second involved an individual who was wrongfully jailed and had been misidentified as a criminal (they thought he was someone else, or so he said).

The government won the first case. I ran out of money working on the second case, which dragged on and on.

It was at the lowest of lows that I made the very hard decision to move away from general litigation, where I had developed my roots as a lawyer, and focus only on immigration. 

It really took almost going broke to realize that immigration was where I needed to focus. 

There was also my wife, who kept believing in me.

She helped me get the books organized and got me to focus on immigration law. 

We were also still getting calls for help with immigration law. I also still disliked USCIS, which made fighting for immigrants that much easier.

Once I focused, everything became easier. I had a true north, I had a consistent message, and was able to focus on systems to make HIL run better.

Jim