Who Is Actually Licensed to Help? Three Public Records That Answer It

Anyone can rent an office, print business cards, and put the word immigration on a sign. The people who are permitted to file a case on your behalf and appear before an immigration judge are a much narrower group, and membership in that group is a matter of public record you can check yourself, usually in under ten minutes, before you hand over a dollar. Three sources cover almost every situation: a state bar directory, the disciplined practitioner list kept by the Executive Office for Immigration Review, and the roster of organizations and representatives recognized by the Department of Justice.

Start with a name and a bar number, not a website

Websites are cheap and say whatever their owner wants. What you need from the first call is narrow: the full legal name of the person who will sign your forms, the state where that person is admitted to practice, and the bar number. A licensed attorney gives all three without hesitation, because the information is public anyway. If you get a firm name instead of a person, or a title like case manager or senior consultant, keep asking until you have a human being with a license attached. Write it down exactly as given, including middle initials.

Immigration practice is federal, which means an attorney admitted in any single state may represent you anywhere in the country, including in a court on the other side of it. That is a genuine convenience, and it also means the state on the letterhead often has nothing to do with the state you live in. So verify against the bar of the state where the person is actually admitted, not the one nearest your address, and if two states are named, check both. Admission somewhere is required. Admission everywhere is not.

What a state bar lookup does and does not tell you

Every state bar publishes a member directory, and the search is free. What you are looking for first is a status line: active, in good standing, or something else. Inactive, suspended, resigned, and disbarred all mean the person cannot practice, and a resignation entered while charges were pending is worth reading closely rather than skimming past. Most directories also list the admission date, the office of record, and public discipline history, sometimes with links to the underlying orders. Discipline in one state does not automatically appear in another, which is the reason to check every jurisdiction named.

The lookup also has limits worth knowing. It confirms that a license exists; it says nothing about how many immigration cases the person has handled, how quickly they answer the phone, or whether the fee quoted is reasonable. A clean record is a floor, not a recommendation. Treat it the way you would treat a contractor's license: necessary before you go further, and no substitute for asking who does the work, what the timeline looks like, and what happens if the case is denied.

The EOIR list of disciplined practitioners

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, part of the Department of Justice, maintains its own discipline system for people who appear before the immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals. It publishes a list of practitioners who have been expelled or suspended from practice before those bodies, and that list is separate from any state bar record. Somebody can hold an active license in one state and still be barred from immigration practice, or the reverse. Search the name in both places. It takes a second search and closes a gap that a single lookup leaves open.

Accredited representatives, and what accreditation permits

Not every legitimate representative is an attorney. The Department of Justice recognizes certain nonprofit organizations and accredits individuals within them to represent people in immigration matters, often at low cost or none. Accreditation comes in two levels: partial, which allows work before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and full, which adds appearances before the immigration courts and the Board. Both the recognized organizations and the accredited individuals appear on a public roster, so you can confirm that the person in front of you is currently listed, with the organization named and the accreditation level stated.

The distinction that matters most is the one nobody volunteers. An office calling itself an immigration consultancy, a document preparation service, or a notary public is not, on that basis alone, permitted to give legal advice or select which form you should file. In much of Latin America a notario público is a trained lawyer; in the United States a notary witnesses signatures. The Federal Trade Commission is responsible for policing deceptive consumer practices, and that mismatch in meaning has been a durable source of them. Typing services exist and are legal when they type what you dictate.

Keep the results. A screenshot of the bar status, the date you checked the EOIR list, and the accreditation entry cost nothing to save and give you a fixed point to return to if the relationship ever goes sideways.