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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35347 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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My source came from a CLE citing official state bar statistics. I can't imagine how immigration would come anywhere near criminal or family in absolute numbers, maybe they meant relative numbers? There's way more prosecutions and custody disputes than immigration proceedings. Representation is rare in the latter category and the biggest losers get deported out of the country, too far to bother with a bar complaint.

I dunno and I’m judging by attorney advertisements, but I see more ads for immigration lawyers than family lawyers in English(I live in Texas). If we assume volume roughly predicts advertising, with obvious exceptions for ambulance chasers and the like, then it looks like there are a lot of immigration proceedings that could generate complaints.

Advertisements are an imperfect proxy for volume because of how many lawyers are provided for free or low-cost. Criminal law is the obvious aberration, because around 80-90% of defendants qualify for a public defender. Some states and nonprofits also provide legal aid. My guess would be that immigration and family law are probably on similar footing on that front. The only other consideration I can think of is that immigration lawyers will chase after specific demographics, and that concentration will naturally encourage advertisement spending.

No, he meant absolute numbers. This was NY, so again it is going to be higher than the country as a whole. But it looks like in 2019 there were about 10 million arrests in the US, many of which were for relatively minor offenses. Re immigration, there were 9 million nonimmigrant visas issued. About 5 million were tourist visas, leaving 4 million. But that is 4 million visas issued; total applications were of course higher. Plus 1 million green cards issued, plus 800,000 citizenship petitions, plus immigration court proceedings. Plus consultations that did not result in official petitions. So there is actually quite a bit of immigration volume.

Interesting. In WA immigration bar complaints were 4.6% of the total.

What year was that?

PS: It is possible that I am misremembering, and the claim was re complaints resulting in discipline, rather than total complaints.

2021

The immigration biz plummeted during COVID so that might have been a bit of an outlier year.

And is that pct of complaints or pct of attorneys. Because shady immigration attys can screw over a lot of clients; this guy apparently filed almost 1200 green card petitions, of which one was approved.

Fair point about COVID. This was percent of all complaints filed that year.

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