Help deciding to hire a lawyer - how often do appeals on sector misclassification and impact get accepted?

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Hi all,

I made a longer post with my pro forma here, about being rejected for Exceptional promise as a Software Engineer, but this message is more general, as I try to decide whether to hire a lawyer.

I did a lawyer consult and he thinks my chances of succeeding via the appeal process are only 40%-ish. He believes I have a stronger case to argue they weren’t properly applying the immigration law for the visa in their decision (separate from tech nation guidance), but the latter would be a quite expensive path to go down (up to 10k GBP).

I have a couple emails out to other lawyers to get a few opinions before I decide.

First, what’s the rough asking price for a lawyer to write an appeal letter for you, or edit a draft? I want to get a feel for ballpark figure before I commit. I was quoted 1k GBP - is that reasonable?

That said, the main reason they rejected me is that they didn’t think one of my company is in the digital technology sector. I feel sure it is, and it’s more about how I presented it. They also seemed to think I didn’t have enough impact (though they accepted my impact for the same companies for the OCs), but I also think that is a presentation issue that I can argue.

I don’t want to go into the details of that here, as that’s for my other post, but I’m curious how common it is that people who appeal on similar lines get endorsed in the end?

The lawyer seems to think my appeal would not be successful, but I really feel (separate from emotions and just wanting it to be true) that I have a case. Reading the forum it seems pretty common for appeals to have positive outcomes (unless you got rejected for all the categories and overall are not at the right level yet), but of course the people that get rejected again might not post or respond so the evidence could be skewed.

Has hiring a lawyer for the appeal really helped you? Is it worth it?

I have quite good executive function and it’s not my first immigration appeal. I am pretty good at these things myself and in the past have been frustrated and felt lawyers didn’t do as good of a job as I would as I am pretty neurotic about details already. That said, lawyers know the law better than me, so maybe there’s something they can argue I don’t know.

Would appreciate any advice on making this decision.

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Hi @nabramow Its always good to have some expert guidance however if you already know where all the feedback can be contested with different parts of your application and can structure it coherently then you can also do it yourself. Just ensure you incorporate al points, route to specific parts and why/how they answer what’s contested, structure well and present your points affirmatively not in a blaming tone. I have helped quite a few people in appeal writings, it’s a professional service. Feel free to reach out if you would like to consider. Good luck!

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I have several problems with hiring lawyers to do your application for you. Will pen some of them down here:

  1. Lawyers are generally not up to date with the latest guidance, and don’t know what’s working. If you look at the success posts and failure posts here - you probably have more perspective and advantage than them here.
  2. They don’t write well. I’ve seen the evidences lawyers write. It’s filled with legalese and it’s confusing to follow-through. You would be able to write in a clearer manner and with your own first-person perspective.
  3. They aren’t technical. Lawyers don’t know their GitHub from their npm, and won’t be able to guide you how to best present technically-oriented evidences in your application.

I suggest the following:

  1. Do a reappeal - best case it works, worst case you get more feedback to work on.
  2. If you get more feedback, feel free to share it here so me or someone else could help you review it.

Good luck!

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Thank you, after reaching out to a few lawyers I ended up feeling the same way.

A lot of them wanted to take a very aggressive stance, pointing out how TechNation wasn’t following the law (rather than making a good case with my evidence) and it just didn’t feel right to me. Especially given TechNation seems a small community, making enemies there felt unwise.