Attorneys go to law school to protect individual rights. That is the job at its core, regardless of practice area. But when civil rights cases involving immigration enforcement, unlawful detentions, and constitutional violations start flooding in, most solo and small firm lawyers assume there is nothing they can do because they do not practice immigration law. Bob Simon, founder of Simon Law Group and Attorney Share, makes the case that assumption is wrong and costly to the people who need help most.
You Do Not Have to Be an Immigration Lawyer to Help
Federal immigration law is uniform across all 50 states. A California attorney can handle a New York immigration case. A family law attorney in Arizona can co-counsel with an immigration lawyer in Los Angeles. The barrier to entry is lower than most lawyers think, and the need is significant.
Ways attorneys outside immigration law can get involved right now:
- Attend one of the trainings being held on how to file habeas corpus petitions, which follow a standard format and can be drafted with AI assistance
- Pursue immigration certification, which allows any barred attorney to appear in federal immigration matters
- Build a referral network of immigration and civil rights attorneys so cases that come to your office can be placed with someone who can actually help
- Use co-counsel arrangements to stay on cases and earn a referral fee while the immigration attorney handles the substantive work
Simon describes sitting outside car washes and workplaces where clients are present and identifying himself as their attorney so agents cannot question those individuals. You do not need an immigration license to show up and say that.
What Attorney Share Does and How It Works
Attorney Share is a co-counsel and referral network that currently includes 5,500 attorneys across all practice areas and all 50 states. Simon built it to solve a problem he saw in his own firm: cases coming in that he could not handle, with nowhere good to send them.
How the platform works in practice:
- An API plugs into your existing intake system or CRM
- When a lead comes in for a practice area you do not handle, the system automatically routes it to attorneys in the network who do
- Co-counsel arrangements are tracked through the platform, including status updates that sync with Clio Manage
- Attorneys can build a private referral network of their preferred go-to lawyers in every state and practice area
- Cases can be scored and filtered so attorneys only see the leads that match what they want to work on
The Clio integration is particularly useful. When a status changes in Clio Manage, the update flows downstream to co-counsel automatically. Simon is tracking fire litigation cases, immigration civil rights cases, and personal injury referrals all through the same system.
The Francisco Longoria Case: What Illegal Detentions Look Like in Practice
Simon describes one of his active clients, Francisco Longoria, as a concrete example of what civil rights violations in immigration enforcement look like when they reach a courtroom.
Longoria was driving home with his teenage son, a U.S. citizen, and his daughter’s boyfriend, also a citizen. Unmarked vehicles pulled up, agents in masks approached the car, and when Longoria asked who they were, the agents broke his windows rather than identifying themselves. He drove away. Agents fired three bullets into the side of the car where the teenager was sitting.
Law enforcement then filed assault on a peace officer charges and released propaganda claiming Longoria had tried to hit officers with his vehicle. Simon’s team retrieved the vehicle, documented the bullet trajectory, and pulled surveillance footage from the surrounding area. The video showed no officers near the front of the car.
The judge reviewed the footage and told the U.S. Attorney that based on the evidence, Longoria appeared to be in a frightening situation and no officers appeared to be in danger. The charges were dropped. Longoria was still held in ICE custody until a habeas corpus petition secured his release. Simon has filed a Federal Tort Claims Act case on his behalf and is waiting out the mandatory six-month period before the lawsuit can be filed.
Simon’s broader point is that many of these cases fall apart in court because the factual claims made by enforcement agencies do not survive scrutiny when video evidence and sworn testimony are placed side by side. The problem is that most people caught in these situations do not have attorneys who can pull that evidence together quickly enough.
AI Intake and Referral Automation for Solo Firms
Simon runs an AI voice receptionist for intake at his firm and uses it to place cases across the Attorney Share network. The same setup is available to solo and small firm attorneys who are already getting calls they cannot take.
| What AI Intake Handles | What It Routes to You or Your Network |
|---|---|
| Inbound calls from potential clients | Civil rights and immigration matters for network attorneys |
| Screening for practice area fit | PI, family law, criminal cases for co-counsel placement |
| Capturing lead information | Cases that match your defined referral preferences |
| Generating call summaries | Status updates that sync back to your co-counsel |
Simon describes attorneys in the network who have built custom automations on top of Attorney Share, including one Alabama attorney who built a scraper that scores incoming cases and prioritizes the ones worth pursuing. The infrastructure is flexible enough that solo attorneys can build on top of it without a large tech team.
The practical argument for getting into co-counsel networks now is straightforward. Your firm is already turning down cases. Every case you turn down with no referral path is a missed relationship and potentially a missed fee. Routing those cases through a network that tracks placement and compensates co-counsel means you are doing something useful with leads that currently just disappear.
Key Takeaways
- Federal immigration law is uniform across all states, meaning any barred attorney can pursue immigration certification and appear in these cases
- Habeas corpus petitions follow a standard format and can be drafted with AI assistance, making them accessible to attorneys without immigration backgrounds
- Attorney Share connects 5,500 attorneys across all practice areas with a co-counsel routing system that integrates directly with Clio
- Civil rights cases involving immigration enforcement often collapse in court when video evidence is preserved and presented properly
- AI intake systems capture every inbound call and can automatically route cases to co-counsel networks, turning missed leads into placed cases
- Solo attorneys have more power and more flexibility than large firms when it comes to taking on cases that matter, without asking anyone’s permission
For more conversations about building a practice that does meaningful work and runs well, watch the latest episode of Law Labs here.
