Immigration software news and updates.

Immigration law firms almost always need to use multiple tools to truly optimize and automate their workflows, and having these tools communicate with one another is one of the best ways to achieve automation. Fortunately, technology has moved in the direction of building the necessary bridges between platforms that allows you to integrate and have one system “talk” to another.

If this sounds overwhelming, don’t fret. Integrating and connecting various tools doesn’t have to be hard, and the most important first step is to figure out what integrations are important for you and your practice before actually implementing them. So, in this article we’ll go over some of the various tools and platforms that immigration law firms should consider integrating into their “tech stack” (more on what that means below) and how to approach integrating them as you automate more of your law firm’s processes.

Let’s dive in.

Legal tech integrations: very important, and simpler than you think

In simple terms, integrations are what allows two different softwares to talk to each other. The more technical name — API, or Application Programming Interface — is a set of protocols created to establish how one platform talks to another and how they will interact and show information to you within each platform’s user interface.

For example, an integration between your immigration case management system and Microsoft Outlook means that you can create an event in your case management tool and it will automatically add it to your Outlook calendar. Without an integration, you have to create that event twice: once in your tool to track it, and another time in your calendar to actually remind you. So integrations are hugely important to save you time and avoid confusion or error that may stem from manual, data entry in multiple systems. Ultimately, integrations are there to help you get the most out of your tech stack and streamline as much of it as possible.

The next foundational question is, “what is a ‘tech stack?’”

A tech stack, or technology stack, is a term that basically encompasses all the different tools and technologies a company uses to get work done on a daily basis. For law firms, this likely means some combination of a case and immigration forms management platform, a billing system, a project management tool, etc.

So if someone asks you what tools you have in your tech stack, you might mention your email client, your billing system, your case management system, and whatever other tech you use to do your work.

We’ve gone over general tools and tech that are useful for immigration lawyers in a prior article, so now let’s dive into what software platforms you should consider for your practice that you can integrate with your immigration case management system as the main “source of truth” for your firm.

Here are a few types of tools to consider when planning your immigration law firm tech stack

The most important question to ask is: what tools do you need to get your work done? While there isn’t one perfect list for every firm, here are a few categories of tools you should consider when thinking about your law firm’s tech stack:

• Immigration case and forms management software: We’re starting here because this is one of the most important to have an efficient law firm. This type of tool will help you manage your immigration cases, fill out immigration forms, send client questionnaires, track case progress, send follow-up messages to your clients when a filing deadline is coming up, and more. Hopefully you’re already using or are interested in using Docketwise for this, but whatever you ultimately choose, this is probably one of the first tools you should get.
• Email and communication tools: At this point, virtually everyone has an email address and phone number, but just in case, remember that in order for clients to hire you, they need to reach you. So make sure to have an email platform you can use, like Microsoft Outlook (part of the Microsoft Suite), Gmail (part of Google Workspace), or others. And to have clients be able to reach you by phone, if you don’t want to give out your personal phone number, consider some electronic phone services like Vonage or Google Voice, which are Voice over IP (VoIP) services, meaning you get your phone service through your internet connection and not through a traditional phone company.
• Billing and payments: Billing clients and keeping track of your finances is part of the business of running a law firm, so it’s important to keep track of that digitally and not on a paper ledger, or worse, in your head. Tools like Quickbooks help you manage your practice finance and LawPay to invoice your clients are good examples, though again, there are others in the market for you to consider.
• Calendar and scheduling apps: Whatever email service you choose above will probably have a calendar option. But there’s tech out there today that allows your clients to automatically schedule calls with you without the back-and-forth email chains. Tools like Calendly and others are great for this. Calendly itself integrates with most email clients’ calendars like Outlook and Google Calendar, so if someone schedules an appointment through your website using the Calendly plugin, for example, you can set up your Calendly so it syncs with your email client calendar. If you need help with your specific email client, you can check out Calendly’s help center for integration instructions.
• Other specific tools: Depending on your practice, you may need other tools as part of your tech stack, from translation services to translate documents, compliance tools, chatbots, and more.

While we can’t list every single type of tool you might need, one way to figure out what other tech to look for is to ask yourself, “what else does my law firm do that I’d like to have automated or streamlined?” You never know what tech is out there if you don’t look around, so once you have that list, see if there’s anything out there that can tackle it.

How to approach integrating multiple tech platforms that your immigration law firm may be using

Generally, there are two ways platforms integrate with one another: one is via a native API, and another is through a third party tool like Zapier.

• APIs: As we mentioned at the beginning, APIs are protocols that let two or more online platforms “talk” to one another. Tools that connect with one another via an API effectively automatically sync up and share information directly between each other. For example, Docketwise has a list of platforms it integrates with via API, including some of the ones we recommend for your tech stack, like Quickbooks and LawPay.  
• Integration tools: Tools like Zapier (and others) allow different web applications to integrate with one another even if they don't have an official API or integration already in place. So if you have Docketwise, Zapier has a guide to help you integrate Docketwise with 5,000 other apps, particularly those without an API that connects to Docketwise directly. Think of Zapier as a bridge between tools that don’t have direct contact with each other - if an integration doesn’t exist, Zapier can bridge the gap.

Ultimately, integration is supposed to be simple, and is aimed at enabling companies to take advantage of how technology can impact their bottom line.

Docketwise: immigration case management with integration at its core

Docketwise is the only immigration case management platform that has an open API and a number of integrations to help you build a tech stack for your firm that will best streamline your process, improve efficiency, and enhance communication and client satisfaction.

To learn more about Docketwise, schedule a demo on our website and subscribe to our Immigration Briefings newsletter to continue learning more about Docketwise and all things immigration and technology.

‍

Project management platforms are designed to help teams organize their work and keep track of progress. In the past few years, more and more of these products have emerged, and even immigration law firms are starting to see the advantages of using these project management tools, not just to assign tasks, but also to keep track of timelines and work delegated to specific team members.

While Docketwise and other immigration forms and case management platforms have built-in task managers, they aren’t always ideal when it comes to managing projects outside of your law firm’s actual casework, such as marketing initiatives, hiring, onboarding, new tech tools, etc.

If your firm is interested in a project management tool as a primary or supplementary organizational tool, here are six of the most widely used project management tools across different industries and the most important features they have to offer.

Here are six project management tools for immigration law firms to consider

Here are six popular project management tools out there in 2022 that could fit your immigration law firm’s needs.

Monday.com

Monday started small, as a tool for work collaboration and in many ways, it has continued to be exactly that, except more sophisticated and organized.

Monday is praised in reviews for being easy to learn and highly functional, and featuring separate functions for each step of project management, including how to assign tasks, attaching files, assigning timelines for each task and tasks to different team members, budgeting, and more. One of the most attractive features that Monday has to offer is that you're able to build your own templates for your project management following Monday’s instructions, or you can use their own templates.

The Monday interface looks like a spreadsheet and is commonly divided into “active” and finished projects. All Monday plans, paid and free, include the same basic features, such as sharing and embedding files, activity logs to track project progress, and mobile integrations. The most significant difference between the paid and free versions is how many people you can include in your teams. In the paid versions, you have a minimum of three members to use the platform, so if your team is smaller than that, or you’re running a solo firm with occasional collaborators, Monday may not be the best fit for you.

Within the paid options, Monday offers four different plans: Basic, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise. Let’s see what each plan has to offer:

• Monday Basic: If you’re not entirely sure you need a project management platform, but want to work with a robust one to decide on its utility, the Basic plan is a great place to start and it’s perfect for small firms of at least three members. It offers a small storage capacity at 5 GB and a single board dashboard for your projects. It may not seem like a lot, but if your team is small and you’re not running many projects at a time, this level should be sufficient for you to see if you need to upgrade your plan to one with more features, if the Basic plan is enough for your team, or if Monday itself is too much. Monday Basic starts at $24 a month, billed for the year.
• Monday Standard: This is the most popular product Monday.com has at the moment. Price-wise, it’s not too much higher than the Basic plan at $30 per month, also billed annually, and also for at least three users. Some of the additional features you have available in the Standard plan include a calendar view of your projects, a dashboard that can combine up to five different boards, integrations with external platforms, 30GB of storage, which is significantly more than the Basic level, and guest access for collaborators outside of your team. If you’re starting to outsource specific tasks on a project or collaborating with contractors, this could be a good fit for you. When you and your team outgrow the Standard tier, you can try Pro, which continues to build up on Standard features.
• Monday Pro: Same as the other plans, Monday Pro requires a minimum of three members and it’s billed annually. At $48 a month, billed annually, for at least three members, you can combine more boards (up to ten), which can also be private, unlimited file storage and guest accounts, time tracking, and all the features in the plans below it. If you are a high volume firm with multilayered, long-term projects, your best bet would be to contact Monday to customize an Enterprise plan.
• Monday Enterprise: As in other platforms, Monday’s highest tiered plan is highly customizable. With up to fifty boards that can be combined in your dashboard, Monday Enterprise provides you with a customized onboarding and customer support experience, advanced security and analytics, and dedicated support staff on Monday’s end.

Regardless of the plan you decide upon, Monday’s “open office style and visuals make it easy to use and highly intuitive. As Motley Fool’s review describes it, “as long as you are a user that is subscribed to that board, you can see everything that is being done”, making Monday ideal for teams of varied sizes, experts and new-to-project-management professionals alike.

For a greater focus on productivity and collaboration as opposed to organization and project management, you may want to try out Asana.

Asana

Available in multiple languages and with over 100 integrations to other tech tools, Asana prides itself on being designed to help teams distribute tasks among team members in a balanced way and give teams the ability to track project progress in real time. Similar to other project management tools, Asana allows you to create boards, set goals and follow their progress over time, manage requests and tasks assigned across different projects to different team members, and use built-in automations to help you and your team save time on smaller tasks.

Asana differentiates itself from other project management tools by stepping away from the traditional spreadsheet layout, allowing you to see your projects in timeline, calendar, board, or timeline view. In addition to having access to multiple boards, you can see tasks assigned to the same team member across multiple projects, which provides a broad overview of whether tasks are distributed in a balanced way across your teams. One of the most interesting features of Asana is project archiving, which includes archives of everything covered under a specific project, including comments on a board. If you’re using these boards as reference for, say, performance reviews, these can be great data you use to provide feedback to your team members.

To learn more about all the different features Asana offers in every aspect of time management, you can refer to the full list of Asana’s features on their website.

Contrary to Monday, which has a “features build-up” pricing model, Asana offers three different plans, plus a customizable Enterprise option you can set up directly with Asana according to your firm’s needs. The same as with Monday, the Enterprise options are meant for larger teams with high volume projects, so most firms will find a good fit among Asana’s set plans. Let’s check out what each of these include:

• Basic: This is Asana’s free plan, recommended for those who are just getting started in project management. Advertised as “free forever”, the Basic plan includes unlimited tasks, projects, messaging, and file storage for up to 15 team members. You can see projects in list or calendar view, and have access to projects’ overviews and briefs. If you’re interested in time tracking, you can incorporate it to Asana Basic through integrations with popular tech tools such as Microsoft 360 and Google Calendar, among others. When you’ve tried Basic and need more features for project design and management, Premium is the next step.
• Premium: Like Monday, Asana bills per user per month, but unlike Monday, doesn’t set member minimums. Asana Premium costs $10.99 per member per month when billed annually, and $13.49 if you pay monthly. With Asana Premium, you can track team progress in tasks assigned using the Timeline view of projects, plus access to unlimited Dashboards and a separate Admin console. Within Asana Premium, you also have access to templates and forms your team members can use for specific tasks, and the ability to also track progress in your projects by assigning milestones. Asana Premium is also a great option for firms working with outside professionals for specific projects, as it provides unlimited guest accounts.

If you reach a point where your firm is consistently hitting milestones in your projects, and needs a project management tool that allows you to manage projects across multiple departments or styles of work, you should look into Asana Business.

• Business: One of the strongest suits of Asana Business is their integrations with leading tech tools such as Salesforce and Adobe Creative Cloud. Asana Business also offers a higher level of customization for firms that want to automate their workflow to a greater extent. In addition to all the features in Premium, Asana Business offers customizable forms and rules builder, and proofing tools, among other features. Asana Business is $24.99 per user per month when billed annually, and $30.49 per user per month when billed monthly.

Asana offers a hefty library of support tools; however, some reviews do point out that the user interface can be a bit intimidating at first: until you add or activate all the features you’re going to use, Asana may look rather blank. To avoid going through a place where you subscribe to a paid plan and are unsure what to do with the blank slate, we suggest doing a test run with a small team using the free version.  Once you start creating boards, assigning tasks, for example, can be done by dragging and dropping.

Both of the project management tools we’ve discussed so far do have a learning curve, even in their free versions with reduced features. If you’re looking for a project management platform with a competitive free version that is simple to use and still provides multiple integrations, your ideal tool may be Trello.

Trello

Trello is widely considered to be very user-friendly, easy to use, and a feasible option for those looking for a tool that helps your firm “organize, coordinate, and track work”, as the PC Mag review of Trello points out. Yes, some reviewers highlight the fact that Trello’s simplicity and lack of certain additional features at the free level mean that it isn’t a good fit for large scale projects, it can certainly be a great entry point for those managing smaller scale projects, such as a small immigration law firm.

Trello focuses on three actions needed in task management: creating, organizing, and prioritizing. Trello also includes ways to include the criteria to follow for different tasks, and guidelines to complete them. Trello is widely known for its card look, where you divide your boards in “To Do”, “Doing”, and “Done” broad categories, under which you can assign specific tasks to specific team members. The way you’re able to move task cards from one subcategory to the other once a task is in progress or completed gives Trello a very realistic look, reminiscent of moving sticky notes on a physical board. Trello is accessible on web, desktop, and mobile app versions.

Trello offers four pricing tiers, each designed with specific needs in mind in terms of number of team members using the platform, security features needed, and work volume:

• Free: The free version of Trello is a basic organizational tool for teams of any size. You can create up to 10 Boards per Workspace, unlimited storage of files of up to 10 MB each, an unlimited activity log, and custom backgrounds and stickers, among other features. Trello’s free version doesn’t have limitations on the number of people who can join your Workspaces, which makes it ideal for teams who want to practice by managing one project at a time. For teams who want to scale up and need more collaborative tools, you may want to look at Trello Standard.
• Standard: File storage capacity increases significantly with the Standard plan, with each file you store in Trello’s unlimited storage to up to 250MB per file. With unlimited boards, custom fields, and saved searches, among others, plus all the features included in the free version, Trello Standard provides plenty of Workspace capabilities for teams who want to take advantage of Trello’s collaborative tools. Trello Standard costs $5 per user per month if billed annually, $6 per user per month if billed monthly. The next two pricing tiers are made for much larger teams that need to manage multiple projects.
• Premium: Trello Premium allows you to try it for free for a limited time. Like other platforms, it builds up from the lower tiered pricing options and includes expanded functionalities the more you pay. This version of Trello offers multiple options for viewing your Workspaces, including calendar, timeline, dashboard, Workspace calendar, and others. Trello Premium also ups the ante on the support available from the company and the ability to export your data outside of Trello. Trello Premium costs $10 per user per month when you pay for the year, and $12.50 per user per month when you pay monthly.

Unlike most tech tool companies that have an “Enterprise” plan, which give little details on the possibilities for this plan because they’re designed to be highly customizable, Trello does advertise features of Enterprise that can give you an idea of how much you can do with the highest tier of Trello. Let’s take a look.

• Enterprise: You will need to contact sales to set up the specifics of your Enterprise subscription, but Trello does provide some ground level features available to your firm under this plan. Trello Enterprise requires a minimum of 25 users, which immediately tells you that Trello Enterprise is for higher volume teams and clients, meaning, those who have larger teams and manage different projects across the board. Trello Enterprise offers unlimited workspaces with organization-wide permissions and visibility, including contract review, onboarding help from a company specialist, ongoing customer support, and enhanced security features like two-factor authentication.

So far, the project management tools we’ve reviewed are available to both PC and Mac users, and have all been developed outside of the traditional software making companies. Our next entry comes from Microsoft, which offers Microsoft Project as their project management tool among the multiple software solutions they’ve developed.

Microsoft Project

Project Online is designed to support project management for all types of projects, and teams working in multiple fields. Like other project management platforms, Microsoft Project focuses on planning, managing, and prioritizing project management tasks. It’s important to differentiate between Microsoft Project on the web from Microsoft Project Online, because their availability is different.  

Microsoft Project on the web is available through the Microsoft Power Platform, while Project Online is available through SharePoint. In this overview, we will be focusing on Project Online. Given that Project is built in the Microsoft ecosystem, if you already use Microsoft Office 360, or use other Microsoft productivity tools, Project will integrate seamlessly with the other tech tools you use, and looks very similar to Microsoft Excel on its layout, so if you’re familiar with Excel, this may be an easy transition for you.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a project management platform that integrates with other popular tech tools, MS Project may not be for you. The number of integrations it offers, in comparison with other platforms, is rather limited outside of the Microsoft ecosystem.

Project is thought to be for experienced project managers who want a well-developed platform and are willing to learn how it works, as Project may have a steeper learning curve than other project management tools. The fact that it requires specific products such as Microsoft subscriptions also makes it more specifically made for a target audience.

Think of Microsoft Project as an enhancing companion to your other Microsoft products that easily allows you to build project management into your everyday tech tools. You can add tasks to the existing platform, adjust duration of timeline stages, and the ability to switch to different views without affecting the layout. You can switch to a Grid view, which allows you to see pending and completed tasks easily, a Kanban board, which is great to see a project’s overall completion, and a Gantt chart, which gives you a timeline style view of tasks and timeline dates.

One of MS Project’s strongest suits are Reports, which compile the data you’ve accumulated through completing your tasks into informational, summarized reports that you can use to share with stakeholders and evaluate the effectiveness of your team’s task completion.

Let’s look at the pricing options available for Microsoft Project. To align with other platforms we are reviewing in this article, we will only be going over pricing options for the cloud-based versions of Project:

• MS Project 1: This is a web-based project management tool designed for those who want a quick start into a project management tool. It offers the same centralized view of the more advanced paid options, with multiple view, planning, collaborating, and report generating options. This could be a fit for you if you are not managing multiple projects, or projects with a lot of moving pieces. Project 1 costs $10 per user per month.
• MS Project 3: At $30 per user per month, this is the most popular offering from the Microsoft Project catalog. Project 3’s scheduling tools are its strongest suit, and include co authoring capabilities, using reports to track progress, working together using Microsoft Teams, which allows you to share files, and build interactive road maps that let you see different projects you are managing across your firm in one central location. You can give MS Project 3 a try for free for a month with your team. This could be a good way to assess whether you truly need this particular tier, or if Project 1, which is ten times cheaper per user per month, covers your firm’s needs.
• MS Project 5: One of the most expensive project management tools overall at $55 per user per month, Project 5 is ideal for larger firms with more complex projects to manage. You can use Project 5 in either the web or desktop environment and its main utility resides in how it lets you prioritize and standardize your processes across the team, while continuing to collaborate and use the most efficient tools available to you.

Looking for something even simpler? Check out Todoist.

Todoist

Like its name may suggest, Todoist’s specialty are to-do lists. In simple terms, Todoist lets you create lists of tasks to complete, and check them off as you go. Available in both web and mobile versions for iOS and Android, Todoist is a great idea for those who want to manage their projects and tasks on the go. One of the strongest points in favor of Todoist is that it works both online and offline, which allows you to keep up with your task tracking regardless of your internet connectivity.

When you open Todoist, the only thing that you see are the tasks assigned to “Today”. If you’re new to project management, only seeing what is more immediately scheduled may help with focus and keep you from getting overwhelmed if you’re seeing a long-term timeline. If you don’t have any tasks for “today”, you won’t see anything on your home page.

Todoist does integrate with other apps to enhance your experience and work with your team more effectively, including voice command tools like Siri. In like with other project management tools, options expand as you go up in pricing. If you and your team find that Todoist is not for you, you can cancel anytime.

Here are the three pricing options available on Todoist:

• Free: This is probably the better known Todoist option, especially if you’re familiar with the app. You can add five projects and include five team members in each. Your file upload is a bit small at 5MB per file, and allows you to see your activity as far back as one week.
• Pro: You’re getting a significant upgrade in what’s available to you if you switch from Free to Pro. You may get billed monthly or annually: $4 per user per month when you’re billed monthly, and $3 per user per month if you’re billed annually. With Pro, you go from having five active projects in the free version to being able to have 300 active projects and 25 team members per project, making this a good option for firms in the growth phase. You can upload much larger files, up to 100MB, and have no limits on how far back you can see your activity history.
• Business: This is an option that is truly only suited for large teams: at 500 active projects per member, it would be difficult to even hit a wall on the number of projects you add as a firm, given that each team member gets a project allocation, and on each of those projects you can include 50 people, making this a pricing option that gives firms a lot of room for project management and compartmentalizing. Todoist Business also provides Admin modes which can help you separate what different members can do within the platform, and you receive dedicated support from Todoist. You can try Business for free before you commit to the $5 per user per month if billed annually, and $6 per member per month when billed monthly.

Lastly, let’s look at Notion, a great option for those who need clear, visually appealing tools as part of their project management platforms.

Notion

Tech website Mashable describes Notion in its review as if “Google Drive and Trello had a baby”. If you’re familiar with both of these or have experience using them separately, maybe this gives you an idea of what they would look like in a hybrid-like product. While Mashable does point out that it may take time to learn all of the features, it highlights how easy it is to customize and how intuitive functions within the platform are. Let’s look at Notion’s main features and how it holds up against other project management tools we’re recommending.

Notion seems to be most appealing to those who struggle with online tools out of the fact that they don’t look or feel the same as physical tools like a paper-based planner or sticky notes. Many of these can be replicated in the Notion workspace, which can be appealing for those looking for a similar experience than what they may get from a paper-based set of tools. Notion is available on a desktop version, iOS, and Android.

Notion includes multiple templates or organization and project management, but you also have the option to create your own templates. Notion itself will suggest templates that would be helpful to you when you first sign up, based on what you do and what you will be using Notion for. If you’re concerned about whether you’ll be able to learn how to use Notion properly, don’t worry - Notion has multiple tutorials in their blog, or you can search for other tutorials on Google or Youtube. These tutorials are very helpful in setting up, using specific functions, and even making your Notion board more aesthetically pleasing.

Boards on Notion are highly customizable. You can see some examples of how to organize specific types of tasks and projects in this review, and what the view in Notion looks like. When it comes to project management, Notion lets you organize your boards according to different criteria, and even cross reference separate boards that you may be using for projects that have some overlap or connection between them. You can also easily add external links or files to board items, and modify the structure of a board after you’ve already started with a project. Just because you started a project with a board looking one way, it doesn’t mean the project has to end with the board looking the same way. One thing that Notion doesn’t do as well as its competitors is sharing. Incorporating boards from other team members isn’t as seamless as with other platforms.

As far as plans go, Notion offers four:

• Personal: This is a free plan for individuals. It’s recommended for people who want to organize their work and life tasks and keep track of the different spheres of responsibility they may have. You can share with five guests, so for example, if you’re starting your firm with a partner and it’s just the two of you, this could be a good start to project management. You get unlimited boards and the ability to sync your boards across devices. When you’re ready to do more, either because you’ve outgrown what’s available in the Personal plan, or because you want more features, move onto Personal Pro, which you can try for free before you sign up for a paid plan.
• Personal Pro: At this level, you pay $4 a month with annual billing, or $5 with monthly billing. You get everything you get in the Personal plan, plus unlimited guests and uploads and the ability to go back on your version history for up to 30 days.
• Team: You’re also able to try Team for free before you sign up for the paid version, and it’s ideal to bring your team’s collaboration to one unified tool. You start getting admin-specific tools at this pricing level, which allows you to give or hold permissions accordingly within the Notion work environment. You can invite unlimited team members to collaborate with you under this subscription model.

The most expensive pricing option available does require some setup with the Notion sales team, but the website does give an overview of what’s available at the Enterprise level.

• Enterprise: When you have more than 100 team members in your account, Notion provides personalized support, and will create a contract customized to your company’s specifications. Notion Enterprise also includes access to an audit log and advanced security options, which, if you’re a high volume firm managing long term projects, is especially important.

Docketwise is case management made by immigration lawyers, for immigration lawyers.

Whether your immigration law firm has 2 people, 40 people, or 400 people, ensuring those people collaborate and track their work effectively is essential to growth and successful case completion. That includes a case management platform that all team members can collaborate on and access relevant information when needed. Enter: Docketwise.

With our full library of immigration forms, easy-to-use client questionnaires and industry-leading API integrations, Docketwise helps you stay up to date on all your immigration cases, communicate easily with your clients, and otherwise build and manage your immigration law firm as you and your team grow with it.

If you want to learn more about Docketwise, schedule a demo at the link below, or sign up for our Immigration Briefings newsletter for daily and weekly immigration updates!

‍

There is no doubt that the United States is an in-demand destination for immigrants, whether based on family ties, for employment opportunities, or for humanitarian reasons. Indeed, in fiscal year 2020, USCIS received over 7 million applications, and the country currently has over 44 million immigrants living in it.

Despite all the technology available in other areas of life, especially in the US, this technological sophistication hasn’t fully reached the immigration space. Most applications that USCIS processes still have to be submitted on paper by mail, including hard copies of supporting documents, and when you consider that hundreds of thousands of employment-based visas are awarded to high-skilled professionals in the tech space, it’s hard to imagine that the immigration system hasn’t looked for ways to innovate to make the process.

USCIS has, over the years,  sought to allow for e-filing of some applications, but these efforts have taken lots of time and money and the results have been less than optimal in the view of many practitioners.

Today USCIS is trying again, and is consulting with a number of immigration technology companies who are already building tools that improve the immigration process for individual applicants, employers and law firms alike. The goal this time around is to actively work with immigration tech stakeholders to hopefully, finally, bring a comprehensive and user-friendly online filing platform to the USCIS benefits process.

So, in this article we’re going to dive into some of the history of USCIS’s last attempt to digitize immigration, and then share a few high-level updates on what the immigration bar is hoping to achieve this time around.

ELIS: USCIS’S first (and pretty unsuccessful) attempt to digitize US immigration

2022 is not the first time that USCIS has tried to bring digital innovation into the immigration process in an attempt to make it more efficient. In fact, the agency’s first attempt at this spanned more than a decade, and a whole lot of money. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very successful, but thankfully, there are lessons to learn from the way things were done that first time around.

ELIS, which stands for Electronic Immigration System, was launched in 2005. But after a decade of work and two versions of ELIS launched totalling over $1 billion dollars, USCIS had only managed to turn two of the 94 immigration application forms in the immigration system electronic.

The main issue with the initial roll-out of ELIS stemmed from the fact that the system wasn’t built to account for all the file review that would happen after an application was submitted. None of the behind-the-scenes work that adjudicators had to do to review supporting documents and paperwork was incorporated into the original online platform.

Here are some of the issues that ELIS faced over time:

• Technology changed faster than USCIS could (or did) integrate into ELIS: by the time there was a new version of ELIS that could be tested, there was often new technology that made the technology ELIS was based on obsolete.
• Digital isn’t always better than paper-based: The way that ELIS was being developed was based on the assumption that digital processing would be superior to paper-based, when that was not always the case. There were steps in the immigration adjudication process that could not be incorporated into ELIS, like verifying aliases, which adjudicators check for manually. In some cultures, people use different aliases over the course of their lifetimes, which have to be verified as part of their background checks, but that wasn’t appropriately integrated into ELIS.
• The technology to make certain processes faster wasn’t available yet: To streamline many adjudication processes, USCIS would have needed to incorporate advanced machine learning and optical recognition technologies (e.g. to scan uploaded documents) that didn’t exist in any meaningful way in the early 2000s.
• The system was not designed with adjudicator input: ELIS was designed thinking that the immigration application review process was linear, when in fact, it isn't. Indeed, one application may be reviewed multiple times by multiple individuals, and move back and forth between various steps in the adjudication process. ELIS didn’t have a mechanism that allowed for files to be moved back and forth between people, making it impractical when parts of the file needed additional review and needed to be sent elsewhere. ELIS developers were working with people who had experience in immigration, but in some cases, hadn’t been working in immigration for a long time. In fact, developers only got a real grasp of the work of immigration adjudicators at service centers once they visited one in person, at which point ELIS was already developed and being tested.a
• Because of all its shortcomings, USCIS adjudicators disliked ELIS: Given that in practice, ELIS caused more problems than it solved due to outages, lack of streamlined adjudication tools, and more, ELIS became an obstacle to adjudicators’ jobs, and they resented the system for making their job harder.

At the end of the day, ELIS was admittedly not very successful. But USCIS is aware of that, and is now restarting its effort and is working to correct one of the things that was not done as much as it should have been in the ELIS development process: involving more stakeholders early and throughout in order to develop a truly best-in-class system.

A wishlist for an ideal USCIS digital immigration platform

The American Immigration Lawyers Association, which has been facilitating meetings with the USCIS Ombudsman, has helped connect immigration technology companies who have specific insights and recommendations based on experience currently supporting lawyers who file immigration applications. One of those recommendations is utilizing an Application Programming Interface, otherwise known as API.

In simple terms, an API is code that allows for the transfer of information from one platform to another. Developing APIs would be a solution that would allow for connecting immigration tech tools that are currently available in the market, and that immigration lawyers and professionals are already using,  to a USCIS platform in a way that would allow these systems to “talk to each other.” Basically, it would allow immigration lawyers who currently create complete immigration applications on platforms like Docketwise to send those complete applications directly to USCIS instead of sending them to a printer to then ship to USCIS by mail.

Taking this into account, here are some of the recommendations we would love to see in a digital USCIS platform.

1. Immigration tech platforms that integrate with USCIS should have access to a testing environment so test updates work before they are released officially by USCIS. This access would include validating integrations and troubleshooting when issues come up before USCIS would go live, to minimize errors and issues with real applications.
2. Platforms that integrate with USCIS should have access to some kind of platform that helps them resolve issues outside of the immigration case environment that are not related to a lawyer’s or applicant’s work.
3. USCIS should give users advance notice of updates and clear deadlines as to go-live dates so that existing immigration case management providers and other immigration tech companies can update their software in a timely manner.
4. When integrations are released, users should have a chance to test them early and provide feedback to USCIS team members, including USCIS immigration officials and software developers.
5. Error messages should be informative enough that would allow users to take action to solve whatever issue is causing the message, including data issues and rejections. For example, if someone inputs their i-94 number in an incorrect format, the error message should not just tell them that it’s wrong, but explain what the right format is.
6. USCIS should provide a way to share application details so that lawyers and applicants can receive automatic confirmations of submissions, approvals, and updates to their cases in real time.
7. USCIS should pace their release of updates and new forms to give applicants and lawyers time to adjust to how to use them. As users provide feedback on how the newest forms are working, USCIS developers can work to incorporate that feedback into subsequent releases in an iterative manner.

These are, of course, wish-list items that are meant to provoke ideas and suggestions as we continue to push for innovation within the immigration space. The process will likely be slow, but slow and steady still does tend to win the race.

Docketwise: using innovation to improve immigration

In the meantime, our team at Docketwise is still laser-focused on building the best immigration forms and case management platform on the market. We believe we can learn from all stakeholders in the immigration and legal technology industries to make Docketwise the best tool to streamline your immigration case management, from communications, client onboarding and payments, and more. Learn more about Docketwise at www.docketwise.com

As we continue to work alongside other stakeholders in the immigration and legal technology industry, we’re also working hard on making Docketwise the best tool to streamline and automate your casework, client relationships and more at your law firm. Schedule a demo to learn more about Docketwise!

‍

Running a fully or even partially remote immigration law firm opens up possibilities in terms of prospective clients, the ability to work from anywhere, and finding employees with a variety of experiences and personalities that may live anywhere in the U.S. or the world

Technology has indeed paved the way to building successful, remote-first law firms that have not only survived COVID-19, but have thrived. Nevertheless, building a cohesive team and culture takes time and effort, and having a remote team does add an additional layer of challenge.

So while there are a number of virtual team-building activities and platforms you can use to have fun with your remote staff, this article dives into somewhat more organized ways you and your law firm can build company culture in a way that builds bonds between coworkers, brings transparency into the firm, and creates room for growth and professional development.

Three ways to build workplace culture in your virtual immigration law firm

These suggestions focus on organized activities that can lead to long-term teamwork and professional development, establishing a pattern of open communication, supporting team members’ strengths, and sharing knowledge to elevate the work of all team members.

Let’s dive in.

1. Set up a daily or weekly “standup meeting”

A standup meeting is an opportunity for an informal catch-up with all team members, so that everyone has a general idea of the tasks other team members are working on and what’s ahead. This isn’t so much to assess anyone or do a performance review, but to help everyone understand the direction in which your firm’s caseload is taking everyone, any possible challenges, and how others can help.

What are some of the features of standup meetings that make them effective?

• Goals are clearly defined for each meeting and teams stick to the established goals. In standup meetings, honoring everyone’s time by keeping conversations on topic is important to ensure team members remain engaged and committed to keep the meeting useful and relevant.
• Someone is always in charge of the meeting. Depending on the size of your team, you may want to invite others to lead (this also encourages the development of leadership skills among different team members). This person is also responsible for ensuring goals are met and next steps are established before the meeting is over.
• Standup meetings are typically 15 minutes or less, depending on the size of the team. You may want to have a team member play the role of timekeeper to ensure there is enough time for everyone to speak, and set up estimated times of discussion for each talking point in the meeting agenda, which sets up expectations to how much or how little time will be devoted to discussions.
• Finally, while standing is encouraged during standup meetings, of course not everyone is able to. The reason these meetings require standing is because it helps keep meetings short (no one wants to stand for too long). Thus, with that in mind, if there are team members that aren’t able to stand, that’s OK - as long as the meeting is concise and efficient, the goal of the meeting is met.

Another important aspect of creating a workplace culture is for team members to understand each other. A professionally-led personality assessment can be a great way for each team member to possibly learn things about themselves they may have not considered, and of course, learn from each other by finding common character traits, complementary character traits for collaboration, and so forth.

2. Gain insight using the Myers-Briggs personality test

The Myers-Briggs personality test is the simplest way to take advantage of what you can learn about yourself and your team’s personalities in order to embrace your understanding of your team members' strengths and learn about each others’ differences from a place of cooperation and respect. The test focuses on helping takers identify their personal preferences in four areas:

• How they direct and receive energy
• How they take in information
• How they decide and come to conclusions
• How they approach the outside world

This is a one-time event that can lead to great reflective conversations down the road. The goal of the Myers-Briggs personality test is to help companies and individuals better develop leadership and professional skills in order to develop the firm’s talent in a way that aligns with business goals while enabling team members to support each other along the way.

And of course, the more team members know about one another, the better they can work together, the more they can get done, and thus the stronger the firm’s culture.

The Myers-Briggs Company offers leadership development options you can run independently, with support from a facilitator, or delegate to a trained facilitator entirely. Training can be delivered in-person or virtually and training includes topics covering inclusivity in the workplace, leadership development, and problem-solving skills, among other topics in addition to the administration of the test itself.

You can purchase the test online for $49.95 on the Myers-Briggs website, a great idea for new team members as part of their onboarding process. You can engage the organization for a more hands-on workshop too.

Lastly, let’s look at reverse-mentoring programs, an idea born from the desire to help junior employees leverage their observations about the workplace and share that knowledge with more senior employees.

3. Create a reverse-mentoring program

Harvard Business Review put it this way: reverse mentoring programs “pair younger employees with executive team members to mentor them in various topics of strategic and cultural relevance.”

Originally designed at General Electric to help senior executives learn how to use the Internet, the goal of reverse mentoring programs is to help companies become more competitive by becoming or staying culturally relevant, and as a consequence, retaining young talent by playing to their strengths and connections to more recent events, platforms, and tools.

For example, one of your junior staff that is more familiar with CRMs can reverse mentor a senior member of your team who doesn’t felt as comfortable using an immigration case management or CRM to show them shortcuts or new ways of doing things. Or if a senior team member is accustomed to sending emails to a client, a reverse mentoring practice could lead to a more junior employee introducing a messaging platform like Slack to the firm, where the client can directly interact with firm team members without setting up phone calls or writing emails.

But reverse mentoring programs go beyond pairing younger staff with more senior members to help them use technology. In addition to these more hands-on matters, reverse mentoring programs can also focus on personal development for professional growth, and understanding the current cultural environment.

In immigration, the latter is incredibly important, as immigration lawyers serve clients across multiple generations, who have developed different cultural constructs, have different priorities and reasons to immigrate, different understandings of the immigration process, etc.

For example, if you are a senior member or managing partner of an immigration law firm, and you want to start providing services to DACA recipients (who are implicitly younger), but are unsure of how to reach out these potential clients, you could have a younger team member at your firm your staff support you in developing short form content for social media to educate your target audience on their options and current updates on the law.

Enhance your immigration law firm’s processes with Docketwise

Whether your firm’s team is a well-oiled machine, or you’re still in the “getting to know each other” phase, Docketwise is the case and form management platform for you. With Docketwise, you can streamline your immigration casework so you can focus on what’s most important: ensuring every step of your client’s immigration timeline is successfully completed.

From a full library of immigration forms to client questionnaires in multiple languages to an industry-leading set of API integrations, we help you stay up to date on all your cases, communicate easily with your clients, and otherwise build and manage your firm.

If you want to learn more about Docketwise, schedule a demo at the link below, or sign up for our Immigration Briefings newsletter for daily and weekly immigration updates!

‍

Docketwise is proud to announce it has been acquired by MyCase, a leading practice management software for lawyers.

Docketwise will continue to be sold as a standalone product, and will also integrate with other legal software providers. Among other benefits, the acquisition will turbocharge Docketwise's expansion of its all-in-one case management software, which powers the firms of over 6,000 immigration practitioners.

“We’ve always sought to empower law firms with the technology they love and that is exactly the kind of software that Jeremy and James have built at Docketwise,” said Jim McGinnis, CEO of MyCase. “By joining forces, we’re so excited to bring modern tools to a broader set of immigration law firms.”

“We’re thrilled to join the MyCase team,” said Peskin. “MyCase’s acquisition of Docketwise provides a major growth opportunity to accelerate product development and our customer base, and we couldn’t be more excited to be part of the growing MyCase family.”

This acquisition comes following a year of significant growth and expansion for MyCase. Since Apax Partners acquired MyCase in October 2020, MyCase added three leading legal technology providers to its ranks: Soluno (Legal Accounting), CASEpeer (Practice Management for Personal Injury Firms), and Woodpecker (Legal Document Automation).

‍

Remote work is here to stay, and it’s continued to increase in the past two and a half years: according to Ladders, a group tracking the increase in remote work opportunities since the start of the pandemic, a quarter of all professional jobs will be performed remotely by the end of 2022.

This trend includes the legal space, with an increase in firms hiring fully remote associates or creating “hybrid” arrangements for new hires. Given the federal nature of immigration law, and the multiple tech tools available that not only allow you to work with clients remotely but to run your administrative tasks remotely as well, many immigration lawyers are embracing fully remote law firms, whether they are starting as solo practitioners or expanding their teams.

If you are working remotely as part of a team, or are just bringing in some new members, you may be wondering how to build a company culture where people feel connected and can work well as a team. Such a culture involves elevating each other’s strengths, solving problems creatively, and fostering an environment of cooperation over competition.

But before you schedule another 6pm wine and cheese Zoom webinar, consider some great tools that are built specifically to help remote teams foster company culture in today’s remote world.

Here they are.

Engage your remote immigration law firm team with these six virtual platforms

The rise in virtual work environments has brought a rise in team-building tech tools you can use to connect with your teams remotely. With free and paid options that include both games and team building exercises, opportunities to connect with your teammates outside of case questions can help build coworker relationships while having fun in the process and even picking up some skills along the way.

These six websites help you create games based on multiple topics, and personalize them to include theme songs and company identifiers such as logos. There is a mix of free and paid options here, with some being more customizable than others. Let’s dive in.

1. Triviamaker

Available for iOS, Android, and on your web browser, Triviamaker gives multiple options to create highly customizable trivia games, either for onboarding, continuing education, or just for fun. You can set your game to four different styles: Multiple choice, Grid, List, and Wheel. You can also add categories and your own questions and answers, but Triviamaker already has a bank of previously created quizzes if you want to try a pre-made one from the website.

There is a basic, free version of Triviamaker, and two paid versions: Premium and Enterprise. The free version is quite limited in what you can access, and doesn’t offer customization, so it may be a good option to give Triviamaker a try and see if you need a paid subscription. The Premium version is paid yearly and offers game options for up to fifty teams; as opposed to the free version, which only allows two teams.

One highlight of Triviamaker’s work is their commitment to charity: 10% of the company’s proceeds go to a specific charity; their current one focuses on access to clean water in sub-saharan Africa.

If you are looking for a platform specialized in activities that help foster communication between new and existing team members, you may want to look at Quizbreaker, an “icebreaker-specialized” platform.

2. Quizbreaker

Quizbreaker is a great option if you’re in a growth phase and adding team members that are fully remote. To get you started, Quizbreaker has 100 icebreaker activities you can use for quick team-building activities. With two-minute lightning rounds, this could be a way to start team meetings in a different way that helps the team connect. You can also send quizzes on a schedule of your choice where your team has to guess who answered in which way, which is another way to see how much your team knows each other! Quizbreaker also allows team members to use comments and emojis to communicate with one other.

You can try Quizbreaker for free for 21 days, or choose a paid option for $3/user/month for monthly billing, or $2/user/month on the yearly option. The paid versions allow you to create multiple teams within your account, adding custom questions, and email support available.

If you’re looking for a platform to host an “extra special” event, Quizcoconut could be a great option.

3. Quizcoconut

Canada-based Quizcoconut is a service that allows you to run virtual team-building events for your team.

Quizcoconut runs game-show style events that you can customize to your firm’s needs. Some of the options you can customize your event to include game shows, “name that tune” contests, interactive challenges, and trivia with general knowledge questions.

Given the custom nature of this service, pricing starts at $750, depending on the size of the event and the date and time. Each event is priced based on individual characteristics, and you can contact Quizcoconut directly to get a quote on an event that truly fits your needs.

If you want a teambuilding platform that is always available, and always free, check out Random Trivia Generator. You may just need to bookmark it after your first try.

4. Random Trivia Generator

About as simple and accessible as it can get, Random Trivia Generator provides multiple categories you can choose from to build your own trivia. In addition, you can assign different people to become hosts and track results, taking your team-building exercise beyond the trivia game itself. This could be a small opportunity to delegate within your team and encourage people to take the lead on organizing.

To get started, simply click on a category to see sample questions start building your next trivia game.

Want to try something more hands-on than trivia? Consider a scavenger hunt. Let’s look at some scavenger hunt platforms, starting with Scavify.

5. Scavify

If you want to create a teambuilding activity that your team members can join in from anywhere and includes more creative problem solving than asking general knowledge questions, a scavenger hunt can provide a fun challenge, especially if everyone in your team is in a different location.

Scavify runs on an app, making it completely mobile. Each person participating in a game completes challenges, tracks progress, and earns rewards on the app. The app verifies all completed challenges independently, and you as an administrator can enable features like a community board, where you can see pictures of team members completing challenges, a leaderboard, where team members can see their rankings as challenges are completed, and rewards and badges that are visible as team members complete challenges.

Scavify has different pricing structures, depending on the level of involvement you want to have in creating your experience: DIY, designed by the Scavify team, or ready-to-go experiences. Pricing also depends on the type of organization, and whether the scavenger hunt will be virtual or in person. You can see the different options for customizable scavenger hunts on Scavify’s website and reach out to create your own experience.

If you want to give your team members more say and variety on the activities they choose, team building, self-care, or otherwise, Thriver offers a variety of options.

6. Thriver

With curated activities beyond the traditional team-building exercises, Thriver offers a variety of experiences to help you create a sense of community amongst your immigration law firm team members, and incorporate different activities that help support your firm’s values among its staff. Activities available include traditional team-building exercises and interactive entertainment, but take options to the next level with volunteering opportunities and creative options such as arts and crafts, cooking and drink classes.

With Thriver, you can open the choice to your team members so they are participating in an activity that they’re genuinely interested in and committed to. Thriver chooses their experience providers based on previous user feedback and referrals and may include large and small businesses. You can look at a catalog of services offered on the Thriver website; some are priced per person, and some have flat rates per activity. Thriver could be a great way not only to foster team-building, but to also show appreciation for your staff by allowing them to choose from a variety of activities beyond the typical virtual game or teambuilding exercise.

Docketwise: the case management platform for remote immigration law firms

Building a strong law firm culture, whether it’s with 4 people, 40 people, or 400 people is important. Once you’ve done that, it’s also important to have the right tools in place to help the firm run smoothly and interact with clients effectively, especially if you’re fully or even partially remote.

That includes a case management platform that all team members can collaborate into and access relevant information when needed. Enter: Docketwise.

With our full library of immigration forms, easy-to-use client questionnaires and industry-leading API integrations, Docketwise helps you stay up to date on all your immigration cases, communicate easily with your clients, and otherwise build and manage your immigration law firm as you and your team grow with it.

If you want to learn more about Docketwise, schedule a demo at the link below, or sign up for our Immigration Briefings newsletter for daily and weekly immigration updates!

‍

The PDF format has become an expected standard for immigration forms and supporting documents. Indeed, we wrote an entire blog post about the top five PDF editing tools immigration law firms should know.

However, there will be moments when your clients may need to upload or provide a document in PDF format but may not have access to a proper scanner - since typically turning a physical document into a PDF requires scanning it and saving it as a PDF. Fortunately, nowadays this does not need to be a problem.

If either you or your client has a smartphone (and it’s likely that you both might in this day and age!), you can use your smartphone to take a picture of the physical document and convert it to a PDF file. There are a variety of apps available, ranging from free and simple to paid and more sophisticated, that either you or your client can use to turn photos of important documents into proper PDF files.

Here they are.

Five smartphone apps that convert photos to PDFs that you can use in your immigration law practice.

Some of the apps we recommend on this list are available in both iOS and Android, while others are only available for one but not the other. Either way, there is a photo-to-PDF app for you no matter what kind of smartphone you own.

Being able to digitize physical documents into PDF format that can be easily uploaded into your client portal or a government portal saves you time and allows you to keep moving cases along without getting stuck. So let’s go over some of the best reviewed applications in the main app stores right now:

1. CamScanner

Available in iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and a web version, CamScanner allows you to scan documents from your phone, digitize documents like licenses and passport identification pages, sign documents, extract and edit text like a PDF annotating tool, protect documents with a pin, and save your documents in multiple formats, not just PDF. According to its description in the iOS App store, CamScanner has been downloaded over 750 million times.

CamScanner also allows you to share files through different formats, including email, WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, and iMessage. To stay in the loop with notes and changes made to documents you’ve shared via CamScanner, the app allows you to turn on notifications on individual documents so you can stay on top of communicating with your team and your clients about the work you’ve done on that document from a different location. One account gives you access across multiple devices, including phones, computers, and tablets.

CamScanner has a free version and two paid versions. Let’s look at some of the features that differentiate the free version from the two paid versions:

• CamScanner Free: Some of the features of the free version include 200MB of cloud storage, the ability to sync your documents across devices, customizable watermarks, and the ability to upload your document to cloud storage services like Google Drive, Evernote, Dropbox, and OneDrive. All you need to do to access CamScanner free is to create an account.
• There are two types of paid CamScanner plans: Premium and Business. Some of the highlights of the Premium subscription are translations in over 60 languages and the ability to share multiple documents at once through the website. On the other hand, the Business plan has all the Premium features in addition to features that allow administrators more control over access to specific members. In both of these plans you can pay monthly or get a yearly subscription and save a little money.

This is not the only available platform you can try, though. PDFElement has similar features to CamScanner, with special emphasis on its ability to also convert PDFs to other formats.

2. PDFElement

Available for both iOS and Android, PDFElement goes beyond converting photos to PDF to also allowing you to edit and annotate your PDF once you’ve converted it. Most importantly, PDFElement lets you convert the PDF to other formats too, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You can also include scanned signatures and insert links into PDF documents.

There are three ways in which you can use PDFElement:

• Desktop: The desktop version gives you 1GB of free storage and gives you all the basic features of PDFElements, which are pretty exhaustive: editing, annotating, signing, converting, and filling out forms. To access the Desktop version of PDFElement, you can download it for free from their website. You can use the Desktop version of PDFElement on either a PC or Mac.
• Mobile: Available for iOS and Android, the mobile version includes all the features of the desktop version but without any cloud storage.
• Cloud: This version provides a significant increase in cloud storage space  by providing 100GB. This is the best suited version for teams that need to collaborate from remote locations. One innovative feature of the Cloud version of PDFElement is the ability to track the activity in your PDF documents and comment on your documents, so your team can see your comments and follow up.

If, in addition to being mobile-friendly, you want an app that can convert pictures to PDFs offline, try Able2Extract PDF Converter. This could be a great recommendation to pass onto clients that don’t always have access to the Internet.

3. Able2Extract PDF Converter

Able2Extract is available for iOS and Android and serves as a very basic PDF converter. By itself, it doesn’t offer many of the bells and whistles that some of the other apps we feature in this article. For example, you’ll need a separate PDF reader to see the file you convert, and other apps to make edits or annotations, as opposed to making those changes in the same app.

But converting a file into PDF using this app is very simple, though - simply upload your picture and convert to PDF.

This is a very basic app that can help you get a picture converted to PDF quickly, especially if you’re trying to work with a client in challenging conditions. There may be an option for you that does more among the ones we’re discussing here. Our next recommendation is an iOS-specific app that converts any file on your phone into a PDF. Let’s take a look.

4. Readdle PDF Converter

Available for iPhone and iPad, Readdle allows you to convert pictures, web pages, and other documents on your clipboard into PDF. Once you convert your picture into PDF, you can store your file in a cloud-based storage like Dropbox.

A major selling point of this app is its ability to convert any file into a PDF and the ability to open and download files from your email, cloud storage apps, your files folder on your phone, or the web. To continue working with your file once it’s converted to PDF, Readdle recommends its sister app, PDF Expert.

If at this point you’re wondering if the inventors of the PDF format have anything to contribute to the photo-to-PDF market of applications, the answer is yes, they do. Let’s wrap this list up with the Adobe Scan mobile app.

5. Adobe Scan

This is a free application advertised as “your scanner in your back pocket” and focuses on scanning and recognizing text. One of the highlighted features of Adobe Scan is its ability to convert pictures from any surface (whiteboards, papers, and cards for example). However, Adobe Scan also gives you the chance to save your scans as both PDFs and JPEGs, so you can add these to other documents you may be working on. As in other apps, you can password-protect your documents, compress them to smaller formats to make sharing easier, and save them in the format of your choice by folders. You can later open your files in a desktop app like Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Adobe Scan is available for iOS and Android and is about as straightforward to use as you can go: scan your document or choose a picture, and convert to PDF. Every scan you capture is automatically stored in the Adobe Document Cloud, which allows you to access your scans across devices and on the go. Adobe Scan also excels at text recognition, along with features that let you “clean up” your scan to make the text clearer.

Notably, Adobe Scan is the New York Times’ pick of 2022 for the best mobile scanning app.

Organize and manage your immigration law firm’s cases with Docketwise

Docketwise is your one-stop solution to manage all your immigration law cases, client relationships, and yes, all your client’s PDFs. With our full library of immigration forms, easy-to-use client questionnaires and industry-leading integrations, Docketwise helps you stay up to date on all your immigration cases, communicate easily with your clients, and otherwise build and manage your immigration law firm.

If you want to learn more about Docketwise, schedule a demo at the link below, or sign up for our Immigration Briefings newsletter for daily and weekly immigration updates!

‍

PDF documents are part of the everyday life of an immigration lawyer. Typically immigration forms are viewed and reviewed in PDF format, with both clients and lawyers completing forms using smart questionnaires that auto-populate PDF documents.

But what happens when you have to edit or modify an existing PDF? Typically, you can’t edit PDF documents in your standard PDF viewer; however, you can if you use a PDF editor.

The most common PDF viewer is Adobe PDF Reader, which reads PDFs, but doesn’t edit them. Having a PDF editor can not only help you make changes in an existing document, but also make annotations for clients, update information as needed more quickly, and more.

So let’s dive into five PDF editing tools that immigration lawyers should know about.

Five PDF editors to try even if you may already have one.

There are a number of options in the market when it comes to PDF editing tools, but here we’re attempting to give everyone some options, regardless of their type of computer or their budget. We will be discussing both free, paid, and built-in options. Adobe is the best known name in PDF documents, for reading or otherwise, so let’s start there.

1. Adobe PDF Editor

Adobe offers two options for editing PDF documents, depending on your needs:

• Edit PDF, an online-based tool which allows you to edit PDFs with comments, highlight, and add drawings and sticky notes as part of your edits. To edit online, you will need to upload your document to the Edit PDF online tool, and do your editing online. When you’re done you can download an annotated copy of the PDF.
• Adobe Acrobat Pro DC is intended for more advanced editing needs. One of the most important features that Acrobat Pro DC offers is accessibility across devices. With this tool, you can access all your documents across different devices, add and collect electronic signatures, and convert files to PDF. You can purchase Acrobat DC for teams for $15 per license per month if you pay annually, or $25 per license per month if you pay monthly, both of which work with both Windows and Mac devices. You can try a free trial of Acrobat Pro DC, and if you have a larger team, you can get a quote from Adobe. You could also purchase an individual license if it’s just you - individual plans include Acrobat Standard DC for Windows (which unfortunately, you cannot try for free) for $12.99/month, which also works with both Windows and Mac.

If you’re looking for something that works within the Google ecosystem, you’re going to want to look at Lumin PDF.

2. Lumin PDF Editor

Lumin PDF is a cloud-based PDF editor which lets you create a centralized space for you and your team to edit PDF documents remotely and sync them to cloud-based platforms like Dropbox and Google Drive. With Lumin, you can draw, annotate, add symbols, insert electronic signatures, and share feedback in real time with your team directly on the document. Lumin also lets you merge documents that you need to put together after working on them separately, and convert your PDFs to other formats like Word. The highlight of Lumin is its ability to sync to storage platforms and the fact that all the work is done in the cloud. This could make Lumin a strong option for firms that have multiple teams working remotely, or outsource part of their work.

Lumin offers three paid options and one free option. Depending on the size of your firm, the free option may be enough for you: you can comment and add free text, as well as up to two signatures and two merged documents a month.

Lumin’s three paid plans are: Professional, Business, and Enterprise. The difference between  Professional and Business lays on the number of members who have access: Business allows solo access for starting at $6.58 a month, while Business costs $6.58 per month per member. You can try both of these paid options for free first.

If, instead, you want something best suited for the Microsoft Office ecosystem, look into PDF Office.

3. PDF Office

In simple terms, PDF Office is an editor, reader, and converter for the Microsoft Office suite. Some of the things you can do with PDF Office include:

• Signing
• Reading and editing
• Creating a new PDF document
• Make a PDF document password-protected
• Annotate with drawings and text
• Bookmark your documents to pick up where you left off on your next session
• Add images
• Share your documents across applications and by mail

You need to have at least Windows 10 to use PDF Office, but it’s free by signing into your Microsoft account, making this the ideal PDF editing tool if you have Microsoft Office 360.

Now let’s look at Apple’s response to PDF editing, Preview.

4. Preview

Preview is MacOS’s default photo viewing program. It comes with every Mac computer. If you have a Mac computer, that means that you already have a PDF editor, and unless you absolutely don’t like it, or need something with greater capabilities, Preview should get the job done.

For the most part, Preview does everything that the free version of Adobe Acrobat (the most recognizable PDF editor) does. Some examples of actions you can do on your PDF with Preview include:

• Add a signature or create a new one. If you have more than one signature, you will have the option of inserting the one you’d like from a dropdown menu. You can create a signature with your trackpad or by taking a picture with your computer camera. You can also create a signature from your phone or iPad.
• Annotate a PDF document using drawing tools, adding text with a text box, and select text to copy and delete, for example.
• Merge, edit, and split PDF documents.

Since Preview is built into your Mac’s operating system, all you need to do is ensure you’re running software updates when they become available.

If you still want to have an affordable, web-based option to edit PDFs that can be used across different operating systems, you may want to look into PDF Candy.

5. PDF Candy

PDF Candy is an online PDF editor with free and paid options. One of its strongest features is the ability to convert PDFs from a variety of formats, including Word, Excel, and JPG. You can also manipulate your document at your convenience, by doing tasks like rotating, cropping, adding page numbers, headers and footers, watermarks, and passwords, to mention a few.

To edit PDF files on PDF Candy, you can upload your files from cloud storage platforms such as  Google Drive or Dropbox, or drag and drop files into each category of tasks. You can access the free version of PDF Candy on their homepage.

However, PDF Candy also offers three paid options, including a lifetime subscription. The most important difference in the paid plans is that the lifetime subscription, which is a one-time fee of $99, gives you access to both the web and the desktop versions of PDF Candy. The other paid versions, either $6/month or $48/year, only provide access to the web-based PDF Candy tools.

These price points make this a choice to consider if you want a one-and-done PDF editing tool, or if you don’t manage a large volume of documents and believe their free tool can get the job done.

Let Docketwise keep the rest of your immigration law practice in one place

Editing PDFs is just one piece of the puzzle of all the work you do to run your immigration law firm, and an important one at that, but regardless of which PDF tools you use above, let Docketwise manage your immigration cases, keep track of client relationships, and otherwise help you run your firm effectively and efficiently.

With our CRM, full library of immigration forms, easy-to-use client questionnaires and industry-leading API integrations, Docketwise helps you stay up to date on all your immigration cases, communicate easily with your clients, and otherwise build and manage your immigration law firm.

If you want to learn more about Docketwise, schedule a demo at the link below, or sign up for our Immigration Briefings newsletter for daily and weekly immigration updates!

‍

Docketwise was born out of the need to build a platform to streamline the work of immigration lawyers. But while it was made with immigration lawyers in mind, lawyers in other fields can, and do, use Docketwise as well to optimize their work. As more and more lawyers who practice in a variety of fields bring Docketwise into their practice, we wanted to explore in more detail many of the features Docketwise offers that are most useful for lawyers regardless of their area of practice.

Let’s jump in.

How Lawyers In Any Practice Area Can Streamline Their Practice With Docketwise

1. Invoicing

Invoicing is an essential administrative task, and the easier it is to complete, the better it is for you as a lawyer to ensure you’re getting paid for your work. Docketwise allows you to create two types of invoices:

• Bills: Within the Bills option, you have two options: you can bill a flat fee, or you can bill hours. To help you provide accurate billable hours, you can use Time Tracking to include all billable hours as part of your invoice for a specific period of time. These payments are recorded or deposited into your Operating Account. You can find specific instructions on how to create a bill on Docketwise’s Support page.
• Trust Requests: This feature allows you to create an invoice that is recorded or deposited into a trust account, as required in specific cases. When the trust request is created, you can record a direct payment, send the invoice to your client so they can pay with a credit card, or set up a payment plan.

It’s very important that you set up your bank accounts on Docketwise before you try to invoice a client. When you do have your accounts set up, and start creating invoices, they can be set to clients by email, text message, or shared through the Client Portal. You can see trust invoice payments by name as they are paid into your firm’s trust account.

Managing invoicing in Docketwise:

• You can set up your Docketwise account to only give invoicing privileges to certain users in your firm, so that only those in charge of invoicing can see and edit invoices. This is important given that financial information requires confidentiality and should be managed carefully.
• Docketwise integrates with Lawpay, an ABA-recommended payment solution for lawyers. If you already use Lawpay, you can sync your Lawpay account with your Docketwise account to set up payment plans that automatically bill clients at specific intervals, and take credit card payments.  
• As part of your follow up on accounts receivable, you can also create Reports on Docketwise that allow you to see unpaid and late invoices, as well as invoices with outstanding balances, so you and your team can follow up accordingly.

Before you can actually invoice clients, though, you have to actually work on cases. So let’s go over Matter Workflows on Docketwise, where you can create case workflows and map out every step you need to take in a case.

2. Matter Workflows

Every case has defined steps from start to finish. With Docketwise, you can create workflows that allow you to visualize and organize your cases by type - these case steps are called Matter Statuses, and you can assign them a timeframe until completion, which keeps you on track along the way.

For each matter status, users can add two automatic actions:

• First, a list of tasks can be added to the matter automatically as soon as the matter is placed into a certain matter status.
• Second, an outgoing email (written in advance by the user and saved under message templates) will be sent to the client with an update for that stage of the case.

This outgoing email helps ensure you’re following up with clients on next steps, which is important for two reasons: first, if clients need to take a specific action, this can be taken in a timely manner to keep the case going; and two, consistent follow-ups from their lawyer helps build trust.

To keep track of all these matters that involve things to do, use the Events Calendar to keep track of everything coming up, delegate tasks among team members when applicable, and prepare for all your responsibilities in due time.

3. Events Calendar

Like many other electronic calendars, the Events Calendar on Docketwise allows you to create different categories of events. For example, you can create case-specific events, such as hearings, filing deadlines, and client meetings, as well as other events that may not have anything to do with your case load directly but are still important for you to be aware of, such as staff birthdays, national and state holidays in which public offices are closed, staff meetings, vacations, leaves of absence, etc.

To make sure that you and all relevant people don’t miss a thing, Events Calendar users can add multiple notifications to an event, which are sent to the user that created the event and those invited.

And because we’re all about minimizing confusion by making things as clear as possible, the Events calendar on Docketwise has a two-way integration with both Google calendar and Outlook calendar.

To continue with the organizational features, let’s look at Notes, which enables you to write and keep your notes and all other case information in one place and thus minimize confusion for you and your team.

4. Notes

Docketwise allows users to enter notes from three different places:

• The main Docketwise Dashboard
• A contact profile page
• A matter page.  

This means that you’re able to make and review notes along the way in different parts of the Docketwise system as you’re following the steps of a particular matter.

Notes can also be assigned to a particular user or multiple users so that they’re notified about the note in case they need to take any action. If you do need to share the notes with anyone that isn’t a Docketwise user, you can export your notes to PDF and share them electronically or print.

Of course, if you’re going to keep all your caseload in Docketwise, that will require storage space. To account for law firms’ growth, Docketwise offers unlimited storage space.

5. Files

The greatest thing about the Files feature on Docketwise is that both you as a lawyer and your clients can securely and directly upload files into the system. You can invite clients to upload files you may need for a step on their case through a questionnaire, or by logging into the client portal. When you’re looking at files on Docketwise, you can preview, rename, and download. You can also compress multiple files, or files that are too large, into a zip file.

Best of all, despite its functionality for lawyers across all areas, Docketwise is highly customizable to fit your individual needs as a firm.

6. Custom attributes

Understanding that every case and every client is different, even when the applicable law is the same, Docketwise Suite and Docketwise Enterprise allow users to add custom attributes for contacts and matters to keep track of data that isn’t asked in standard forms but may be relevant to the case or the client.

Some examples of common custom attributes for contacts might include:

• Name of person who referred the client (this could be helpful to see how many clients are coming to you via referrals)
• Name of client's previous attorney.

Some examples of custom attributes for matters might include:

• name of judge hearing the case
• name of the grant funding the work (this is an example specific to nonprofits).  

Some of the ways in which these custom attributes can help you find information on Docketwise more efficiently are:

• Users can use the custom attributes as filters when running reports
• Users can export the values of the custom attributes to documents when using the Automated templates feature.

We regularly speak to and work with our users to understand what they need to run their firms as effectively as possible, and we’re constantly building new features, optimizing existing features, constantly progressing toward our mission of empowering lawyers with great technology so that you can focus on what you do best.

Docketwise is a case management platform for all lawyers

If you're not an immigration lawyer but you're looking for a modern, cloud-based and flexible platform to help you run your law firm, check out Docketwise. With our CRM, easy-to-use client questionnaires and industry-leading API integrations, Docketwise helps you stay up to date on all your cases, communicate easily with your clients, and otherwise build and manage your law firm.

Learn more about Docketwise by scheduling a demo at the link below!

‍