Immigration Lawyers Should Embrace Technology to Thwart UPL

Online services could be the key to protecting immigrants from unlicensed legal practitioners, according to a panel of immigration lawyers at the ABA’s 2017 UPL School.

Immigration law has long been rife with bad actors who engage in the unauthorized practice of law and victimize immigrants, the panelists said. Many of them identify themselves as “notarios” if they are notaries public. But their use of that term often misleads immigrants into thinking that they can provide legal services as well, Moderator M. Mercedes Badia-Tavas and panelist Mary Carmen R. Madrid-Crost said.

This is because in many Spanish-speaking countries and in ...