An Introvert's Path to Running an Immigration Law Firm

Katya Valasek:

We're joined today by Jimmy Lai. As an international student, Jimmy struggled to get jobs that would sponsor him post-law school, so he co-founded his own firm with a friend. Now, among other practice areas, Jimmy helps immigrant students and professionals work through similar legal hurdles.

Jimmy, I want to start off with a bit of background. Where are you from and what made you interested in pursuing a legal career in the first place?

Jimmy Lai:

I'm originally from Taiwan, and I've been an international student in Oklahoma since 2012 until I finished my law school JD, MBA degree in December of 2021. And then within a year of graduation, co-founded the law firm with my law school classmate. I never wanted to be an entrepreneur, but life circumstances forced me to.

I was struggling with finding jobs and being able to be sponsored, to start my own firm and to be able to have a career in the U.S.

Katya Valasek:

As you just said, you turned lemons into lemonade in a lot of different ways, and I want to try and dig into pieces of it in a bit more detail. So to start, you're an international student here in the U.S. Why were you looking to pursue a law degree?

Jimmy Lai:

Initially, I wanted to pursue a law degree only after my first day on my first job out of college, which was a car salesperson. And then on the first day on the job, it kind of told me, I think I need to go to law school to maybe have a better career in the U.S. and maybe more opportunities.

But if we rewind that further, my initial motivation to become a lawyer is actually back when I was five years old. Growing up, my mom started her own business. She had a language school that she ran. It was a private school, but my mom was more of a no-nonsense type of principal. It's either her education philosophy or you can take your money and she'll happily refund the tuition and tell you to enroll your kids elsewhere. And she did that quite often because she'd rather have parents who are on the same wavelength in regards to education policies and how she educates kids.

You can imagine that those parents are doctors, lawyers, businessmen. So their ego gets bruised that their child is not good enough to attend her school. So they would threaten her with lawsuits or threaten to go to the media or get local politicians involved. And me being a five-year-old seeing that, I told my mom I wanted to be a lawyer to protect her when I grow up. So that was my initial motivation.

And then throughout K through 12, I realized, and I don't know why I told myself, what if I went to law school in the US and failed the bar exam, then it would have been for nothing. I would have wasted 12 years of education through high school, then four years of undergrad and three years of law school. And I don't know why I told myself if I failed the bar exam, then I won't be a lawyer anymore. And that would have been a waste of seven years of the total education. And in reality, what ended up happening was I did end up failing the bar exam three times and I passed it on the fourth try anyways. And now I still run a seven-figure law firm.

Katya Valasek:

So your initial plan wasn't to go to law school. And I think people often assume that a lawyer has to be an extrovert. It needs to be someone who's aggressive and eager to debate. Do you feel like that is an accurate imagination of what a lawyer is and what they do? Or is your experience different?

Jimmy Lai:

I will blame pop culture on this and I'll blame the TV show Suits. It's a really entertaining and dramatic depiction of lawyer work. But I'll blame it because it was so popular that people think that our job is like we're Harvey and Mike all the time. And even though Louis Litt is a little bit weird, but I would categorize him as more of an extrovert still. But I disagree that all lawyers are extroverts. Myself, I am an introvert. And that's one of the reasons why I forced myself actually to be a car salesman because I was so much an introvert where if you met me at a grocery store and I needed something from aisle two and I see you in aisle two, I will wait, deliberately wait for you to go get my stuff so I never had to say hello to you. That's how much of an introvert I was. So I forced myself to be a car salesman and just to be able to hold down a conversation. And I figured that selling skills would come in handy because even if you're an attorney, you're selling your arguments to the judge. You're selling your strategy to the client. You're selling your services to the client. So I figured that some selling skills could come in handy down the line.

Katya Valasek:

So you got into law school, but your path to a career was somewhat different because you were an international student. How early on in your time as a J.D. student were you aware of the visa constraints hanging over your career?

Jimmy Lai:

Pretty early on, I was under the same constraint when I was going through undergrad degree. So I already knew that it was a difficult pathway being sponsored in the U.S. after graduation. So when I was going through the J.D. degree, I was already aware of the constraints. Also, there were internship opportunities where it required me to be at least a green card holder or U.S. citizen. So there were some internship opportunities that they were wanting to interview me, but then they find out, oh, I'm an international student. Sorry, we can no longer interview you because you do have to have a green card or a citizenship. So many opportunities that I could not go for. And when I was about to graduate, looking for jobs, opportunities, there's always that question most of the time on the job application form that asks, will you now or in the future require a work visa? And I click yes, I will now or in the future require a work visa. And sure enough, within five minutes, I will get an automatic rejection email telling me I wasn't qualified.

I distinctly remember one time where I applied to a job opening that only required a bachelor degree and a minimal job experience. I applied with my J.D. MBA, so I'm clearly overqualified. And what they're requiring of the minimal descriptions, I meet fully. But however, within 10 minutes, I received an email saying, sorry, you're not qualified for the job. So it's definitely that one key question that if an employer doesn't want to do the sponsorship route, which I totally understand that that's the reality that we face is that most of the time we as international students will have a tough time looking for a job or extend their time in the U.S. Unless you're maybe the top 1% in law school or you're going to the top 14 law schools.

Katya Valasek:

I am curious how long after graduation and going through the job application process, how long did it take for you to realize that finding an employer to hire you was going to be more difficult than you thought? How did you start to pivot at that point in time?

Jimmy Lai:

So I finished my dual degree in December, and I would say I put in a good three months effort into searching for jobs, but kept getting rejections or no invitations to at least interview like the door wasn't even open for me to at least get across the door. And that's when I came across this visa called the E2 visa. It's an investor visa that allows for countries with treaties with the U.S. to invest in a substantial amount in a business venture to be able to get that visa to usually it's good for five years at a time, which can be renewed every five years. So I'm on that visa currently. I discovered that visa and I reached out to my now co-founder, who was a law school classmate of mine. I just texted him and said, hey, what do you think about starting a law firm together? And he just said, sure. And that's how we started a law firm. We didn't even discuss like, well, how are we going to do it? What are we going to do? I was like, let's do it. And he's like, sure, let's do it.

And then and then over time, I would say from March onward until we were officially established in October, it was about seven month time frame where we were doing some like the planning and putting investments in place to make sure we can launch. And there were also challenges and hurdles for me, because as an international student, when I graduated, I only have, I believe, three months to be able to find something to stay on my OPT. So OPT is like Optional Training Program, which allows for international students to stay for another year without additional requirements. And during that time frame, I think we're only allowed 90 days of unemployment days. So even then I was under that constraint. But luckily, I was able to find two different businesses that allowed me to be unpaid remote interns to kind of stop the clock to make sure that I don't run afoul with my student status. So I was able to do that to kind of stop the clock. And then I could not operate legally my business yet, but I was able to make business plans and put things in place in order for me to then leave the U.S., go back to Taiwan and then apply for that visa.

Katya Valasek:

So you made some bold moves. I'm curious, why did you pick that particular classmate to reach out to, to ask about starting a business? Was there something about your relationship with him in law school that made you think he'd be a good partner?

Jimmy Lai:

I think it's because I was an introvert. So throughout law school, I only had like that many friends to reach out to and all the other ones I knew of, they already had jobs. And even though my co-founder had a job, he was working in Louisiana and he wanted to be back in Oklahoma. So I figured he would be the right person to ask. And we were smoking buddies through law school. We would kind of sneak out to the parking lot and smoke during breaks. So we were kind of developed a bond there. So even though cigarette kills and cigarettes not good, but it did form a friendship with him and became my law firm partner. I've since quit smoking. So that's, that's a good thing.

Katya Valasek:

But yeah, you never know how you're going to find that next friend who's going to be an influential person in your life. Did anyone advise against starting a law firm?

Jimmy Lai:

I think people who were, they didn't necessarily advise against, but they were more cautious and careful. And that person was my mom, my mom being an entrepreneur herself. She knew what the entrepreneur life was like. Even growing up, I knew she was working 24 seven, even on weekends. She knew that life, like, you know, she doesn't want that life for me, the entrepreneur life. She actually wanted me to just work for an employer or maybe somehow be a professor at a school. So then I can, I can maybe have summers off and visit her in Taiwan. That was what she wanted for me. But I told her like, those paths are not, you know, attainable for me. And the only pathway for me to establish a career in the U.S. because the U.S. law degree won't really do me much good in Taiwan. The only pathway for me is to really consider this E2 visa option, bet on myself and do everything I can to make it work because my back's against the wall is either I do this or pack my bags and say goodbye to the U.S., which is a country that I really love and really enjoy. And I do still believe in the American dream.

Katya Valasek:

So the process of starting your own firm was slightly different than many others here in the U.S. because you had that additional visa requirement. And you mentioned earlier that part of the visa requirement was a substantial investment. I'm assuming that means money.

So how did you go about finding that initial capital that you needed to meet the requirements of the visa so you could start your business in the U.S.?

Jimmy Lai:

I would like to kind of give a little bit context about the visa itself with regards to the requirement of substantial investment. Typically, attorneys will say a substantial investment is $100,000 to $150,000. However, in the regulation, it kept it pretty big. It just says substantial investment.

In my case, when I was researching the visa, I talked to various attorneys and I was advised that I need to try to invest as close to $100,000 as possible. And so that was kind of the basis of that. But then I also knew for a law firm, you don't really need to spend $100,000 to start a law firm. When things can be done virtually, you don't really need an office space, too. You can maybe just rent a co-working space to meet with a client or a private small release, minimal private office. But all you need is internet access, computer, and phone. That's all you need to kind of start servicing. So I knew it was a tough task. I also didn't have the $100,000.

So to answer that question, I'm fortunate to be in a position where my parents were able to gift me the funds. It has to be a gift or a personal loan collateralized with your personal assets. So you can only use the funds from a personal loan or gifts from, usually gifts from immediate family members is the best. And I need to strategically use those funds and investments to show the US government that I made the substantial investment required for the business. So one of the things I did was, you know, purchasing a company vehicle that kind of helped show the amount. And I can justify that I would need to drive to meet clients. Leasing an office space and committed to a two-year lease to show that I'm invested and I have at risk this amount of money. So in total, I was able to show close to $100,000 in investments to the US government. But even then, I was still very scared and afraid, like what if my visa doesn't get approved and I made all these investments and spending. So I was still really afraid when I flew back to Taiwan. And it was many sleepless nights and just hoping and praying. Hopefully, they see that I'm genuine, made this business investment. It's going to be a real operating business. So then they approve it. Because if they don't approve it, then all the money just went down the drain.

Katya Valasek:

Was there any tension between you and your partner because you needed to find all this money to show that you were investing in the business and he didn't have the same requirements? Was he doing other things to help get the business off the ground while you were getting this money and showing that financial investment?

Jimmy Lai:

That's the good thing about him being a US citizen. While we had a setup between October and getting my visa in December, he was able to be the one operating the business. I couldn't operate anything still.

I can only be on the business investment level. And so he was able to meet with the clients, sign clients up. And I was able to then show to the US government, hey, this is a redacted list of our existing clients, what are the case types we have and what are the expected revenue.

And it's all done by this US business partner that I have. Another aspect that made our partnership helpful over the last three years was he really, truly trusted in my business judgments. He delegated the business side of the law to me and said, hey, Jimmy, you take care of the business, the marketing, and then he'll take care of the legal side of the operations. So he's mainly been doing criminal defense work and probate work. So kind of delegated that to him. And I'm more focused on the business development side of the business.

Katya Valasek:

Okay. So you said you were delegated the business side of the business. So let's talk about some of those things that you do day to day. You mentioned finding clients. How did you go about finding clients at first and getting your firm name out there?

Jimmy Lai:

It's been a process, but from what I can recall in the early days, what we did was join various business chambers. So there's the Greater OKC Chamber. There was also an aging chamber in Oklahoma City, which intrigued us. And I joined those chambers. And in the early days, they would have networking events. They would have all these meetings.

And I would attend those and have my business card, even though I was an introvert, but I still forced myself to go out there. Because I was like, this is do or die. If I don't get business, this visa is for nothing and I got to leave. So it's do or die. And I would attend those with just pass on my business card like candy. And say, hey, my name is Jimmy.

I just started my own law firm. So those were the early tactics.

The next tactic was setting up a Google business profile. It's really key. Even with AI nowadays, Google search still dominates. And in order for people to know you, the Google business profile was key for us because we were able to then ask people to leave us reviews, either character reviews or if there were clients to leave us reviews. And just to show a comparison, in the early days, we had maybe zero to one phone calls per week. But over time, because we built up Google reviews, Google naturally shows us towards the map pack. We call it the map pack where the results, you show the maps listing. Somehow we were able to show up in the top three of the map pack. So we started getting more and more phone calls. And when we got to about 100 reviews, that's when we started getting three phone calls a day, five phone calls a day. And to this point now today, we're averaging anywhere between 40 to 60 phone calls a day. And I would say Google review is something that most service-based businesses, they don't really think about because traditionally, I think with professionals, we view ourselves as relationship-based. They want to go for the referrals. But me being an outsider, I'm not from Oklahoma. Even though I lived here for 12 years at that point, I still feel like an outsider. I went and didn't have deep roots to

Oklahomans. I didn't know people. So I could not go that route and build a referral base.

And after doing those type of activities, it's when we increased our budget to be able to spend on ads. That's the next phase, spending on ads to scale the business. And then the fourth phase was then being able to reinvest some of the revenues into SEO. And so those were the phases of our growth journey.

Katya Valasek:

How did you know when it was time to move on to the next phase? Or what made you confident that you were ready to move on to the next phase?

Jimmy Lai:

For me, the decision making was usually like, how much revenue are we generating now? What's the cost? How much can I afford to risk? It boils down to your willingness to take calculated risks. And that's where I think sometimes the disconnect occurs between the lawyer mentality and the business owner mentality. To run a law firm, you really do have to treat it like a business. So you have to look at it as a business that you have to make decisions based on data and based on the willingness to take calculated risk. But for us lawyers, we're more risk averse. We don't want to take risk. We want to avoid risk. So that's where the disconnect occurs. If you're a lawyer and you're going to think about running your own business, you have to take off that lawyer mindset. You have to throw that away and put on your business owner mindset and treat your law firm as a business.

Katya Valasek:

So you said earlier that you're getting between 40 and 60 calls per day. That seems like a lot of calls to me. Do you have capacity to handle more calls than that? Or are you looking at growth in some different metric?

Jimmy Lai:

The beauty of being a CEO and business owner mindset is that I'm not handling the phone calls myself. I can handle. So another key thing to growth is the willingness to delegate. Delegation. You can only grow through delegation. You cannot do everything yourself, even though you might be best.

So I tell people, if you're okay with the next person, just doing it at least to 80% of what you can do. Be acceptable of that and you'll be fine because no one is going to care as much of the business as you will. No one's going to be 100% like you. But if you can accept 80% is good enough, then start delegating. So the beauty of that is that I'm not answering 40 to 60 phone calls per day myself, but we have a team of intake that we utilize, three people right now on the team that handles the 40 to 60 phone calls a day. And not all are qualified clients.

So they can be calling about, I have a landlord tenant issue and there'll be a quick phone call and say, I'm sorry, we do not handle that. But here is a link to Legal Aid where you can see they have a lot of resources to how you can resolve your landlord tenant issues. So that's one of the core value of our firm is empathy, which I really want all our team members to hold, is that when people are searching and reaching out to lawyers, they're typically not in a good state. You don't look for a lawyer when you're happy. Or maybe when you're about to close a business deal, you want to have a lawyer to have a look at it. But for the most part, if you need a lawyer, you're not in a good place. You're not happy to have to find a lawyer. We cannot help everyone, but at least provide them some resources that they can go to to help themselves or point them to other law firms where they might be a better fit.

Katya Valasek:

Well, your strategy worked because your firm has really grown. And now you have lawyers on your team specializing in estate planning, criminal defense, real estate law, personal injury, and more. What kind of work do you specifically do with clients?

Jimmy Lai:

Early on, I was doing a lot more of the immigration work. I'm a non-immigrant visa holder, non-immigrant immigration lawyer, helping my clients obtain their green cards and citizenship. So that's like the irony of my situation.

I'm not a green card holder. I'm not a U.S. citizen. And I often tell my clients, in order to achieve my American dream, I have to make sure I help you achieve yours first.

However, now I'm trying to fully embrace the CEO role of the company. And that goes back to when I applied for the E-2 visa, they didn't want people to use the visa to circumvent the sponsorship. So I could not apply and let it be seen that I'm applying just to be a lawyer.

So I was applying under that I'm here to be the CEO of the company to direct, manage, and grow this enterprise. So I'm now trying to fully embrace the CEO role of the company. I would say that that's kind of like my role now is I don't really have any cases on hand. Even on the immigration team, I have two attorneys now working on that team and two assistants. So four people on this immigration team that my role mostly is just onboarding the clients, saying thank you for choosing us, welcoming us, and our team will facilitate servicing you. I'm also involved in the bi-weekly meetings to make sure that the case is proceeding as is, and they're utilizing the strategies that I put in place.

Katya Valasek:

Are there any other practice areas you're considering expanding into, or are you happy with the practice areas you service now?

Jimmy Lai:

Yeah, right now, yeah, I think our core areas are immigration, estate planning, family law, criminal defense, and personal injury. These are our core practice areas, and I think we'll remain at that, try to excel. Early on, I was advised, when running a business, to niche down, to pick one lane. But I'm afraid of putting all eggs in one basket, so I refused to listen. And so it was more like we started broad, and now we're starting to niche down as we understand where we're positioned, what kind of clients we can service, what kind of revenue we can generate. So now we've identified these are the five areas that we really want to focus on, and that's helped us.

Actually, last month, we opened up an office in Tulsa. We're based in OKC. We opened up an office in Tulsa, and then just this week, actually, this Monday, we opened up an office in Seattle, just doing immigration work, because one of the employees lives in Seattle. I also happen to have a Washington license, and immigration is actually a federal practice, so you can be in any state and service clients over the US and globally. And I thought it made sense to try to have some presence in Seattle, and with the population there, maybe we can start advertising more there and get more clients in that Seattle area.

Katya Valasek:

What is your process of thinking about adding new headcount to the firm?

Jimmy Lai:

I get asked that quite a lot when other firm owners and I are discussing about our business, and especially with early-stage firm owners, they wonder, when is a good time to add capacity? When should I hire a paralegal? When should I hire a legal assistant?

And my analysis is usually, it's kind of like a chicken and egg scenario. You don't know if you need to hire in advance, or if you hire too far in advance, then you don't have enough work to pay for that revenue. So my answer is usually, when you feel like you're at 80% capacity, and it looks like you have a pipeline of more cases coming in the door, that's when you should start adding someone.

And if that position could be a revenue-generating role, then it also helps your analysis. If you're hiring another attorney who can bill and collect, then maybe you can go ahead and, as a business owner, give up 50% of your cases, give it to the attorney to fulfill and bill against, and then you free yourself 50% of the time to do more business development and client relationship work, where your objective is getting more clients through the door. And if that person that you hire is a revenue-generating, that position could pretty much pay for itself. They're generating revenue for themselves, and you're using that revenue to pay for their salary.

Katya Valasek:

So do you still go to any of those networking meetings you started out at at the very beginning of your career? Do you go now as a more established business and try and open opportunities to people who are starting new businesses? Or have you been able to step away from that as an introvert who never really enjoyed them?

Jimmy Lai:

As an introvert, yeah, I think you can guess my answer is I kind of stepped back from doing a lot of in-person networking. However, I still attend the big events. Like if I have an annual gala, I will still attend, or an annual party, I will attend those. But yeah, now I stepped back from having to do that. And if we really need to do it, I also encourage our staff members who are more extroverted. I was like, here, you can take a couple hours off if you want to go to this. So you agree to go to this event for two hours, I'll give you half day off the next day or something to make up for going to an event. So I encourage our team members. And frankly, that's the approach I like, because I cannot do everything myself. And it works better when the whole team or people can step up in various ways. And all of us in the aggregate could contribute better than what I could do myself.