To lawyer or not to lawyer?
 

Hi all,

Apologies as I'm sure this will have been asked before, but I can't source anything through the search at the moment. The quick overview is that I am the British citizen, and my husband is American. We have been married for 11 years, 2 kids with dual US/UK passports, and have been living together in the US for the last 10 years. Myself and the kids have now been back in the UK since May, and I secured the job making over minimum income in July, making my 6 months in January 2020. We have been consulting a lawyer up until now, but her fees have just taken a major hike and I'm considering filing it all myself. I'm fairly adept at immigration hoo-ha as I've gone through the process in both Korea many moons ago, and then as a permanent resident in the US, and then getting my children UK passports, and then importing 5 pets to the UK via air and sea, etc, etc. I was wondering how many of you have instructed a lawyer to file the visa application for you, and did you find in the end that it was necessary? Is it fairly common for people to file themselves? I feel like we should be a fairly straight forward case as we have been following the rules to a T so far - neither myself nor my spouse have any criminal history (he is a former US soldier) and over the last year or so I have been compiling old leases, home loans, and assorted other documents that date back to the beginning of our marriage together. We have joint bank accounts in the US, and plenty of other fodder to prove the marriage. So, to lawyer or not to lawyer?! Many thanks for any advice

Re: To lawyer or not to lawyer?
 

Welcome to BE.

We ask all new members to please have a quick read of the forum rules https://britishexpats.com/site-rules/

The problem with using a lawyer is that YOU have to fill in the forms and get all the relevant information for them, they can only remit what you have given them, the only real thing they are doing, or should be doing, is ensuring you have all the relevany information, a lot of money just to check over your documents. There are plenty of people on here who have done the application and will be able to help with any queries, so I suggest yoiu try yourself. The only time a lawyer is useful if you there is problems with criminal records etc, but usually it's all pretty straight forward, and using a lawyer will NOT speed up the process.

Re: To lawyer or not to lawyer?
 

It's a "tick the boxes" application. You either tick the boxes or you don't - and as mkelincs said, unless you have some real issues, a lawyer submission won't be of any benefit, and frankly, some of them give VERY bad advice and are not familiar with the most recent rules. I would also suggest that you visit the UK-Yankee forum as that is specific to your situation. There is good advice here as well, but also a lot of questions or threads specific to other countries.

I was under pre-2012 "old rules" but did it myself with no problems.