Legal Automation for Immigration Law - Sisu Legal Case Study

Sisu Legal, founded by attorney Emilia Coto, uses legal document automation to help run her immigration law practice. The firm has 12 workflows they use on a daily or weekly basis, 95% of their workflows are client-facing (meaning clients enter their data), and they estimate they save about 75% of the time they spent on each case. 

Who is Immigration Firm Sisu Legal?

Sisu Legal in an immigration firm founded in 2020 with a mission to bring families together. They specialize in Canadian and US immigration law, with offices in Windsor, Ontario, and Troy, Michigan. The firm assists in bringing couples and their significant others into either Canada or the US by obtaining visas. In addition to American and Canadian TN Visas, SISU also specializes in sponsorships and humanitarian and compassionate ground applications. 

Interview With Sisu Legal

Read the full interview below, and watch our rapid-fire Q&A with founder Emilia Coto here:

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Q: What type of legal technology do you use as an immigration law firm? 

Document automation was one of the first pieces of software I added to my stack, and it’s what motivated me to start thinking of creative ways to use my time as effectively as possible and improve the client experience.

After that, the next most important were a CRM tool, a case tracking tool, and automatic emails that get sent out to clients. The automated email include a welcome email with links to Gavel workflows and all the questionnaires and information I need from the client. About 95% of the data I collect from clients in the client intake process is done through these workflows.

‍Q: As an immigration firm, how do you handle language differences in your workflows?

Many of my clients are Spanish speakers, and I want to make sure I have the same excellent client experience for native English and Spanish speakers, so I have my workflows in English and Spanish. My clients understand what they’re answering and can answer at their own pace, creating profiles, saving their information in Gavel, and coming back to finish when they’re ready.

Q: Tell us the before/after story of how you’ve used legal technology in your firm.

Before using Gavel at my prior firm, we had to schedule time with the client to go over their information and take more meetings with them. Then, we had Word templates that we would manually edit, but that leads to human error. Using technology allows my firm to error-proof the initial work.

For any Canadian immigration lawyer, getting all the information you need from the client can be a pain. I have a questionnaire for each different type of form, and I send it to the client in the onboarding email. Right away, they can start working on their immigration application. Once I get the information, it's easy for someone on my team to put it into the official forms without having multiple meetings with the clients. I gather about 95% of the client information through Gavel.

Q: How much time would you estimate you’ve saved by automating on Gavel?

For each client, I easily save several hours of work and about 75% of the time I spent drafting.

I would say two or three meetings with the clients that I used to do, especially for my Spanish-speaking clients. If they weren't comfortable in English, then we would have to get on the phone and answer questions together. And for some applications, there can easily be six to seven forms.

Q: What are some unique use cases you’ve found for legal automation?

One cool and different use case is that a lot of immigration applications in Canada and the US need letters of support from family members, so we recently tested out template letters. These are basically prompts for reference writers to use, so they don’t have to think about the letter’s structure and what to include. They just write in their responses. Then, we help make some quick edits once they’re done to make sure the letters make sense.

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