Overcoming Drug Possession Charges: A Unique Perspective
December 20, 2024
Although the number of immigrants have reduced in the last few months of 2024, the Immigration Advice Service suggests that there are still a significant number of applications from people willing to enter the country.
As of September 2024, the UK government reported in their official site that over 1.1 million visas were granted for non-visit reasons. In that same period, 8,519 people were removed from the UK and returned to their home country.
In the year ending June 2024, 18,918 people were detained in immigration in the UK. That number increased to 19,335 in the year ending September 2024 which is a significant increase from the previous year.
Out of the above numbers from those detained and those who have been removed, 85% did not have legal representation (culled from a survey conducted by Bail for Immigration Detainees).
The above statistics show the need and demand for skilled immigration legal professionals. An immigration lawyer is the legal expert you need to hire as an immigrant to represent you with your immigration case.
The high demand for immigration lawyers shows that law students who specialize in immigration have vast opportunities open to them. Hence, law students who wish to become immigration lawyers need to read this blog to understand how to be successful in their career.
How to Start a Successful Career as a Professional Immigration Lawyer
The steps to becoming a professional immigration lawyer is quite straightforward, hence this guidance should be easy for law students to understand.
Top 3 Expert Tips for Law Students Aspiring to Become Immigration Lawyers
The steps in the section above contains what law students should know about pursuing a career in immigration law. Nevertheless, in this section, you will get 3 tips that will prepare you in your journey as an immigration lawyer.
Specialize and gain relevant experience
When you graduate as a law student, you can generalize for a moment before niching down. However, it is advised to start on time to focus on practical skills in immigration law.
There are different fields in immigration law that you can specialize in and they include – asylum, deportation defense, business immigration, family-based, etc.
There are different ways to gain experience as a prospective immigration lawyer. Through legal aid clinics, internships at immigration law firms, or non-profit organizations who focus on immigration.
Some law firms require a certain level of qualifications before they can accept you as an intern or an aid in a legal clinic. If you do not have such qualifications, there are still alternatives to getting the practical experience that you need.
You can shadow expert immigration lawyers to gain first hand experience and you can volunteer at organizations that handle immigration cases. To get access to these volunteering and internship opportunities, you should network with professionals in the field.
You can find them at joint bar associations, local and international law conferences and professional social media platforms such as LinkedIn.
Develop strong research and analytical skills
Generally, being a lawyer means that you must have strong legal acumen and being an immigration lawyer means that such acumen has to be stronger because of the unpredictable nature of immigration. Having such strong acumen involves having strong research and analytical skills.
Knowing that the facts, legal statutes, precedents and case law that you interpret will determine your client’s future means that you have to be extra careful. Presenting wrong facts, and making unnecessary errors or misinterpretations can jeopardize your client’s rights. Doing proper research helps you to make proper decisions and build strong arguments on your client’s behalf.
Continuously, you need to know where to find immigration-specific information and precedents that can help your case. Subscribing to databases such as BAILII, Westlaw and LexisLibrary will expose you to laws and ratio decidendi that can help you build your case.
You can also follow blogs such as the Immigration Advice Services to stay updated about legislative updates concerning immigration.
Cultivate cultural sensitivity and communication skills
When you work as an immigration, it is more likely that you will work with clients from different countries, with different nationalities, languages and cultural backgrounds.
Some of them are coming from countries where English is not their first language, so you need to patiently communicate clearly and empathetically for them to understand.
Aside from being legally savvy, you need to know how to interact with your clients. You should be able to get your clients to trust you and be willing to give you sensitive information that could help with the case.
Some of them, especially those seeking asylum, have probably passed through a traumatic experience and will need compassionate legal representation which emphasizes the importance of being emotionally intelligent as an immigration lawyer.
Furthermore, being multilingual can prove advantageous when working with clients from different countries. A client automatically gets more comfortable when they see that you can speak and understand their language.
Key Advice From Immigration Experts for Law Students in 2025
The immigration experts or lawyers who are extremely good at what they do once started as law students too. They moved from point A to point B by hard work and applying the expert advice given to them by those ahead of them.
You can visit their site to read insights that they’ve shared for aspiring lawyers in immigration law. Some popular insights include having a deep knowledge and understanding of immigration law, prioritizing how you communicate with your client, having practical hands-on experience and staying updated about immigration laws.
The three tips discussed in this article will turn you from a novice law student to an expert immigration lawyer. Immigration lawyers are more than just another type of lawyer, they are the hope of immigrants to reunite with their family.
Hence, wishes have become horses so you too can begin pursuing your interest in immigration law.
