Lawrence R Holmes Immigration Attorney

Before I hired Lawrence Holmes to process our immigration case, I did my best to do my due diligence to find out about his client satisfaction. I did find it odd that he had NO complaints online, only «rave» reviews, which is unheard of, since no business ever has 100% client satisfaction. However, I can’t say I had any gut feelings against hiring him, and after the hard sell over the phone, I made the decision to hire him and his paralegal team.
See, that’s just the thing — in hindsight, I felt duped because the office certainly didn’t live up to what I was told in the initial conversation. They DID collect the initial information and submitted it correctly, and it’s not their fault the case took a little longer in the first round. However, when the case moved to the NVC, this is where things got screwed up. The paralegal made errors left and right, which was annoying, seeing as how I thought I was paying for their expertise. Heck, I could have made those errors and could have saved myself several thousand dollars. What’s worse, is the paralegal not only goofed up the SAME paperwork several times, but she tried to blame it on other components of the case. And even worse than that, the paralegal was dishonest when she said she had resolved everything and we would have an appointment the following month. When I called the NVC, they said they keep a record of every single phone call and logged correspondence on the case, and there had been no movement on the case, nor had the attorney’s office contacted them in over a month.
I was furious, and emailed the paralegal and the attorney, neither of which responded. I think they believe that their lack of response absolves them of their dishonesty. It’s almost like if they didn’t respond to my emails, they wouldn’t admit guilt. In the end, it doesn’t matter. I knew they were being dishonest and had caused months of delays in the processing of the case due to repeating the same errors — not responding to my emails wouldn’t change this. In the end, I submitted the final paperwork to the NVC myself, since the NVC said the attorney’s office had not submitted anything new for the case in more than 1 month. It was with MY paperwork and additional cost that things moved forward, no thanks to the attorney’s office.
I am disappointed that I paid for this service when I literally finished it myself. For some reason, I thought it would be an advantage to have an attorney submit the case for me, and maybe it would have been, had they actually done the job I paid for. I am sure that they have an abstract clause to cover themselves for this in the legal mumbo jumbo in the contract I signed. This doesn’t excuse lack of attention to detail, which caused multiple errors and months of unnecessary delays in processing the immigration case. I could have recommended Mr. Holmes to multiple people who needed an attorney, but I am sorry to say that I wouldn’t wish my experience on anyone.

Had the pleasure to work with the team at the law offices of Lawrence R. Holmes on an Adjustment of Status (AOS).
From the initial telephone consultation until completion and granting of the Green Card by USCIS, the team was very professional and well prepared.
Other than having a face to face meeting while in the area prior to engagement, all other matters were managed via telephone and e-​mail — so no matter the distance, it was never an issue.
Given what was at stake, I wanted a team very experience with immigration matters. And, that’s what we had working with the Law Office of Lawrence R. Holmes.
They get my highest recommendation.

The Mr & I chose to work w/​Lawrence Holmes, to foster the Mr’s immigration. His prices were more expensive than other places we had researched, however, after a horrific experience w/​a different attorney, we thought, «you get what you pay for»… & severed ties w/​that place & moved over to Larry
During our initial call, we were assured they would do all the work & handhold us through the entire process… which is exactly what we were looking for. We’re both just too busy & more importantly, completely unfamiliar w/​the intricacies. So it was worth it to us, to engage an expert who would take out all the guesswork & hassle
At the end of this 1+ year long endeavor, here is our assessment of events
After we signed the services contract, we were handed off to a paralegal & never heard from the attorney again
Initial information packet was full of forms to fill out & requests for documentation. This was really nice & we very much appreciated the outline of anything & everything that might even be remotely needed, to be as thoroughly prepared as possible
Application approval was supposed to take 2 – 3 weeks but after 6 weeks w/​no word, I reached out for a status check & turned out 1 of the departments had lost our paperwork… shouldn’t your offices have been monitoring this?
Easy solution would be to establish a tickler-​file /​calendar event to remind whoever is working various files, which files were due by when, to ensure the process was continuing as expected
I also found myself repeatedly reaching out to ask for a recap of where we were in the process, what the next step was, as well as an average timeline for each next step… it would have been great to receive regular status updates
At the 9-​month mark, we were notified of our interview date at the Consulate. The hitch there was, the National Visa Center letter stated we should not have any travel planned… but it just so happened that the interview date was the day before we were leaving on an international, nonrefundable trip, we had arranged 6 months prior & we weren’t about to cancel it.
And, our paralegal hadn’t advised us about the Mr having to surrender his passport during the interview, for 2+ weeks while they created his Visa & this was a critical piece of info! Thank goodness we saw this in the NVC letter or it would have been NO travel for us
(we had to reschedule the appt w/​NVC directly — the paralegal would not facilitate the change request)
6-​weeks post immigration I reached out since we still had no green card & was advised there was currently a 6 – 8 week wait time… but the initial expectation had been set at 2 – 3 weeks. Since this timeline had changed, it would have been nice to have been advised
9-​weeks post immigration we still had no SSN — Mr visited our local SSN Admin office to check status & was advised our paperwork had been lost (again) so they had to take a new application — had we not followed up, we would still be without
Overall, I felt like we ended up following up on most things & there was very little handholding. However, our Visa was approved w/​no hassles — just super-​extended timeframes and 2 occurrences of lost paperwork… so am ranking this experience as «average» — 3-​Stars