The Lemon Fool

My son's partner is Chinese and has been living with us in the UK (they share a room in my home) for a couple of years on a student visa but she will need to sort out a partner visa before it runs out, around the end of this year. She is working but doesn't earn enough to qualify for a visa that way.

They have looked at the requirements for a partner visa and she should definitely qualify but getting the correct evidence in place is a challenge and they feel that they probably need to employ a specialist solicitor to help them navigate the complexities of the system!

The question is, how do they choose a good solicitor for this purpose among the many hundreds who seem to be offering their services? Any suggestions?

Have you considered contacting the Law Society?

GwyneeJ wrote:My son's partner is Chinese and has been living with us in the UK (they share a room in my home) for a couple of years on a student visa but she will need to sort out a partner visa before it runs out, around the end of this year. She is working but doesn't earn enough to qualify for a visa that way.

They have looked at the requirements for a partner visa and she should definitely qualify but getting the correct evidence in place is a challenge and they feel that they probably need to employ a specialist solicitor to help them navigate the complexities of the system!

The question is, how do they choose a good solicitor for this purpose among the many hundreds who seem to be offering their services? Any suggestions?

I've used this from time to time and also looked up solicitors I know, and I consider it pretty accurate. These are generally the big beasts, check their fee structure before committing.

https://www.legal500.com/united-kingdom-solicitors/

Then choose your region and (under employment) immigration. You can also choose to go direct to a barrister - there is a separate page.

I'm assuming that word-of-mouth is not an option. Most of my own work gets done by my mother's old solicitor which is based in a small country town 150 miles away.

DM

Are they determined not to marry? Because a spousal visa is not that hard to get, and can be done yourself without a solicitor, if you are willing to plough through the paperwork yourself. Certainly a barrister should not be necessary.

It is a long time since I looked into this and things might have changed. But I recall the foreign spouse needing things like personal references, birth and marriage certificates, college degrees/transcripts, vaccination certificates and address/job history. Then there is a rather invasive interview (although not as bad as the US green card interviews) and the usual background/criminal/credit checks.

As with engaging any service, a personal recommendation is best, but you probably don't know anyone who has needed an immigration solicitor before. You could call a few firms and ask if they can put you in your with a previous client for you to ask questions of. It might be better to ask to speak to someone who needed a lot of work doing just to see how well the solicitor communicated.

The main thing to ask the solicitor about is what they will charge. Your son's partner should be able to meet with them for free to ask how much they will charge, and ask who will do the work. You or your son might want to accompany her to make sure that she picks up on any bad signs that they might exhibit.

Gathering the evidence might be hard, but solicitors aren't magicians. Most of the time the applicant has to do all the legwork anyway, and the solicitor just completed the paperwork having checked that the evidence is in order. Using a solicitor should de-risk the process, but you can expect it to cost quite a bit. The more work she and your son can do themselves, the cheaper the cost of using a solicitor will be. Ideally, you would only use them to get advice that you can't get via any other means.