Helen missed my appeal deadline! She wouldn't have even remembered it if I hadn't pointed it out to her. How is that for the managing partner of a law firm? Looking back, the entire engagement with Helen and Manis Law was riddled with red flags.

If you expect your immigration lawyer to come prepared to your Zoom calls, ready to discuss strategies for strengthening your application, lower your expectations. Helen will likely not have time to read your emails beforehand, so she'll end up doing it in front of you.

If you expect your lawyer to be familiar with immigration guidelines, I hope you enjoy doing your own research. Helen will give you incorrect advice—whether it's about what evidence to submit, the use of DocuSign, or recommendation letters. It seems like she just can’t be bothered with those details. To give her some credit, she will copy-paste sections of your resume into a template and your information into government forms, but beyond that, you're on your own.

If you're expecting your lawyer to be attentive to details or even competent in basic math, prepare to be disappointed. At Helen Manis's firm, they can't even calculate 20% of 5,000 correctly (and that's third-grade math!).

As a cherry on top, if you expect your lawyer to know how to use email chains properly, forget about it. Helen will send most emails in a new chain every time (which might explain why it took her three weeks to grasp the names of my eight recommenders). And don’t expect sharable Google Docs either—despite being in use for over 15 years now, Helen will send you files in Apple Pages format, which will be an absolute pain to edit (I hope she doesn’t charge you by the hour).

Of course, I brought all of this up to Helen, and in true form, as a lawyer who truly values her clients, she politely dismissed all of my communications. At that point (and especially after she missed my appeal deadline), I filed a formal complaint. Even then, Helen stayed true to her values by violating her own Complaint Procedure three times!

I was in a very vulnerable personal situation at the time, which I explained to Helen. That didn’t stop her from wanting to take my money and onboard me as a client. I’ve worked with numerous lawyers in both the US and the UK, and Helen is, categorically and unequivocally, the most ineffective, ill-prepared, and inept — my advice: run away from Helen if you care about the outcome of your case.