Case Study · Immigration
Chen & Associates
Immigration Law
How a 14-attorney firm reduced visa research from 4.5 hours to 25 seconds per matter — and recovered 1,530 billable hours a year.
The challenge.
Chen & Associates handles H-1B, L-1, O-1, and EB-5 matters for technology employers and their families across 34 US consulates. Each matter requires research into the current USCIS policy manual, recent AAO precedent decisions, consulate-specific practice notes, and country-condition reports — often all four in the same filing.
By early 2025 the average senior associate was spending 4.5 hours on research per matter. Across 340 matters a month, that was 18,360 hours a year — mostly repetitive lookups that never produced a novel legal argument.
Managing partner David Chen wanted the firm’s experts doing expert work. He did not want to hire five more associates to absorb volume that was growing 22 percent year-on-year.
The solution.
The firm rolled out Marco Reid across the entire practice in September 2025. Marco was configured with the firm’s internal precedent library, every AAO decision from 2015 onwards, and the live USCIS policy manual as primary sources.
Research queries that previously took an associate 4.5 hours now return a drafted memo with verified citations in 25 seconds on average. Every citation links back to the exact paragraph of the source. Every memo is logged to the matter audit trail.
Intake flows were rebuilt around Marco. Paralegals now ask Marco the initial eligibility and risk-flag questions directly inside the matter workspace, and escalate to attorneys only when a real legal judgement is required — rather than for procedural lookups.
Results.
4.5 hrs → 25s
Research time per visa matter
1,530
Hours recovered annually
340
Matters processed monthly
$486K
Recovered billable capacity
“We don’t think of Marco as a research tool anymore. It’s a partner that never gets tired and never forgets an AAO footnote. My associates are writing harder cases and advising clients instead of chasing policy manual updates.”
Timeline.
Initial discovery call. 14 attorneys; 3,900 matters per year.
2-week pilot on H-1B intake team. 60% of queries answered without escalation on day one.
Firm-wide rollout. Replaced two legacy research subscriptions in the same month.
First quarterly review: 1,530 hours recovered since rollout. Two senior paralegals shifted to client-facing advisory work.
Ready to see what Marco Reid can do for your firm?
We onboard immigration practices in under two weeks, including precedent indexing and a dedicated solutions engineer.