lawyer or not?

[my medellin 0]

I used a lawyer because I did not find visajourney until after I had filed. However, I probably would have used one anyway as I had previously done AOS (not initial visa though) for someone and wanted to be sure all my bases were covered. I think most cases can be done by reading and following the guides, and asking questions along the way. I used the guide exclusively when we did AOS and had no problems.

on

I did the same thing. Got a lawyer to handle my case. I did not want anything to go wrong and boy was I wrong.

I hired the lawyer on may 30. She had all the paperwork and evidences that she needed with in 1 week. On June 26 she had me sign the I-129f and pay the remainder of the moneys due. every 2 week I call her and she said that it should be any day now that I get my noa 1. after 8 weeks I ask her when she sent off the paper work she told me that it was not sent out until the end of August. Then I had a problem with my bank and the check did not clear. If she sent the paper work off when she said she was going to then the bank problem would of not been an issues. I did not get my noa1 until September 22. I complain about the lack of effort from her office and the lack of compantcey there and she refund me 50% of my money I paid to her.

so be careful about hiring and do your research well.

Brian

[abbynorm2 0]

I'm just curious how many of you had lawyers and how your processing of the K-1 went whether you had one or not? And by that I mean if you didn't use a lawyer do you feel like it was stressful, difficult, not that bad, etc. And if you had a lawyer did you feel comfortable during the filing process? And would you recommend getting a lawyer and why?

No, we didn't use a lawyer. I found this site months before I was ready to file my K1. I read other threads about this topic of lawyer or no lawyer and found that the lawyers will slow down the process, and you will end up doing most of the work anyway (collecting evidence and making copies etc...) the online forms are not difficult to fill out and the guides are rather straight forward. Actually, I was unable to find a post that said that the lawyers sped up the process. There were a few people who were satisfied with the lawyer's performance, but most were not because of serious delays in filing or weeks with no returned calls/emails. If you choose to use a lawyer, get some kind of time frame commitment as to when they will file your case once your part is finished, otherwise it could be next year sometime.

A friend of mine had me convinced that I needed a lawyer, and he recommended his Manila expert for K1's. So I called the so called K1 expert for the Philippines. After a short conversation, he laughed at me because of my situation (which is the same as many VJers here which is only having met once in person) so I hung up and decided to do it myself.

Whatever you choose, Good luck