The head of the biggest immigration law firm in the US explains how a recently acquired Y Combinator-backed startup will play a key role in its plans to compete with the Big 4
SimpleCitizen, a Y Combinator-backed startup that helps people seek green cards, will be the cornerstone of the law firm's new technology subsidiary that will help it compete with the Big 4. Multinational corporations use a mix of consultants and lawyers to help comply with immigration requirements, a technology-heavy business.
Fragomen made $702 million a year from immigration law, and its chairman said despite the pandemic he expects revenue to rise this year.Most US lawyers would rather not compete with the Big Four, but immigration-focused law firm Fragomen Del Rey Bensen & Loewy has no choice. For companies with multinational workforces, from startups to the Fortune 500, getting employees the proper work authorizations and making sure other laws are followed often requires outside help. from the American Immigration Lawyers' Association noted that "accessibility, availability and cost" are the top considerations for clients., Fragomen Del Rey Bensen & Loewy made $702 million in revenue last year practicing immigration law, a service many other firms don't even offer. it has found itself in global competition with the Big Four. While consultancies can't offer legal services to clients in the US, they can in other parts of the world. Deloitte UK"In competing with the Big Four, we're competing for global mobility business — moving people around the world," the firm's chairman Austin Fragomen said in a recent interview. "It's all about technology. The volume's tremendous. Velocity is essential. Low cost is absolutely required. Efficiency, quality control — all of these things are enhanced through technology."Meet 9 legal tech startups that top VCs say are poised to take off as law firms look to cut costs and boost productivity Its latest play has been to acquire SimpleCitizen, a platform that helps people apply for US citizenship, permanent residency, and other visas. The startup, which was founded in 2015 and came out of well-known venture investor and incubator Y Combinator, was acquired by Fragomen for an undisclosed amount in September. SimpleCitizen has called itself the TurboTax of immigration, and its website makes it easy to understand why. It puts mind-numbing forms into a sleek web interface and gives users the option of connecting with a lawyer. But Sam Stoddard, the company's CEO, said individual users weren't the company's only market. The startup has quietly been networking with enterprises and building products to support their needs, which led to bumping into Fragomen. "We've worked with large companies with several thousand individuals and foreign nationals, and even those numbers we've assisted with — and on the family immigration side, tens of thousands of users — they don't compare to the numbers inside Fragomen," Stoddard said.SimpleCitizen will form the core of a new subsidiary, Fragomen Technologies, which will serve as a suite of tech products and tools for clients. Austin Fragomen said his firm is prepared to invest heavily in tech. The law firm's spending on IT in past years has come close to 10% of its annual revenue, he said. And while it's hard to predict what kind of savings those investments would drive, Fragomen said it would bring his firm closer to its goal of having $1 billion in annual revenue.These are the 10 hottest legal tech startups that have raised a combined $1.4 billion in VC funding from investors like Bessemer Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz The acquisition comes amid a slowdown in international travel and a rise in remote work. Austin Fragomen said he initially feared that the public health and economic crisis would reduce the need for immigration legal work, but he said that hasn't been the case. While demand around the globe has dampened, he said demand for US work hasn't fallen as much because many foreign workers with work-visa needs are already in the US. "All those [US] restrictions really only affect about 10% of our practice," he said. "We had a natural, fairly steep increase in business [earlier this year] and what COVID did was it levelled it off, so that I'd say our revenue for 2020 will be slightly above what it was for 2019, but not as much above it as it would've been if this hadn't happened."A selection of our best stories daily based on your reading preferences. Sign up for Insider Select.By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Business Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our
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