we are recording the proceedings today some of which would be necessary to have any record that can be made available that will be appearing on the court's website all right looking at the record of your practice before the court there was a time before you started working with ms vargas ms patricia vargas and i'm wondering if you could describe in what ways your practice was different before you started working with ms barnes ok basically what happened was that on or about july two thousand and fourteen ms fargas passed away i time pasadena because she spent a lot of her time in chicago she passed away in july just fourteen i took over her practice she did a lot of ninth circuit she mentor me especially in learning how to do nice work and be a appeals ok let me go back and just fill in a few things i'll get back to this  even made it to practice in california and nevada since two thousand and three structure so what was your first employment after you pass the bar i worked for a  tax defense firm capital tax services a little hills california but i was only there for a few months i was laid off services look for a job but in the meantime a good family members and people ask specially like you know i'm i come from immigrant background my my parents are so they're immigrants i would get people from like my church or people to ask me hey do  immigration laws you can allow my my cousins and locked up in l a county jail that's just built into it so i mean i did put my resume out there for law firms but again back to where we were you know that we filled in the background so our whole records don't reflect the kind of issues that played out in the order to show cause before i guess you were so i guess what what what what i'm searching for here is you described in your response here that your practices and dr patricia  practices correct but i'm wondering what was your time before you adopted those practices whole scale that you were following a different set of schedules i would take payments but i would like just a flat fee you would have been you know a lot better shape if you they continued to do that that's correct yes so what was your typical engagement letter like when these in these cases that are mentioned in order to show cause we had where there were issues with cases being dismissed because  unless they paid more money you weren't doing anything more my correct no your honor it would be you would continue on and we would require another payment for the you know the payment of five hundred monthly five hundred monthly us for total amount of how much forty five hundred are all right so  should of done motions to a draw and some of them i lost contact with so about the amount of time it took and the amount of court resources it took to his she order after order asking you when when you get paid you have to pay then but in some of these cases you paid a fee in the courts at a briefing schedule for the bridge would be due sixty or ninety days after that so here we have the case it's in the court you've paid the fee you've got a briefing today so what would be the next step with the client what communication would there be in that stage with some of the letters or were mostly of the phone calls from the last contact with them because sometimes may times they would just disappear on us they would pay the their initial retainer and then they just disappear again when there are instances where you had a client that didn't disappear fulfill their side of the bargain why didn't you file the brief there was i got overwhelmed by the countering you just let the brief today go and then wait for the court to issue an order dismissing  more more up to speed on the regs have i know you inherited a bunch of clients from patricia vargas but i'm how do you now get clients most of them are word of mouth or some of that most of my do from the beginning of the that would get to get denied most some would be like asylum claims from central america or mexico all the way from the b i and then like circular snow what percentage of where he was representing a client in the administration long yes he did he did he would refer me some of those cases is that a you know he said that that was only twenty percent of your but litigated but i would say then looking at the car over the weekend getting prepared for this hearing i did notice that there were some called bars cases in there that he litigated below were like they wanted a summary of responding to those motions a timely manner do you have any examples of a response to a motion that you've done recently so i'm thinking maybe this would be a good subject for a post hearing submission rather than having you go through here records now th why a petition for you should not be dismissed for mike interesting question i don't know if there have been any where the responded to any of those but i would be interested in hearing about that as well  so from what i gather from our discussion here today is that most of the cases where you filed the filing that were ready to go were cases and then sometimes later on you would file a brief with petitions what circumstances would you decide to file a brief so we would do the brief and sometimes i didn't file something that i had told finding doing the brief because i would get the car and i realize that some of the issues were were like were weren't weren't there like it would be like there was no social group there or there was a firm or settlement issue or the record wasn't developed but in practice it was like getting contact with the client making sure they want to go forward with it i do a lot of free work to go so some of them i let go because of a bad calendaring which i changed but i was diligent a lot of the other cases because i mean the day i got the day i got i have made changes your honor in a lot of these cases we had a lot of free were a lot of free work trying to remedy and avoid harm to the client even if they didn't pay money and because we didn't withdraw that's what i did moshe's real estate so a lot of these cases those bonda and then on another duran arias would get a motion to reopen with the b s he's now reopened and in front of immigration court ok so here's one one point but we'll keep monitoring this case in the court and it's there's a lot of people here not enough people just a lot of people who are overworked trying to deal with a huge volume of cases  and when we have additional work that these folks have to deal because try to make them as workman like as possible i don't want to put any what's the word i don't want to do an inadequate brief or sometimes i find a car tactic or anything so as you sit here today you think it's important for you to notify the court if you file a motion to reopen that's granted but i do look like now is your practice we will either move to either move to to withdraw or just do the brief we we have no we can't we can't do any harm to and then if the client decides not to proceed with the appeal do you also think it's appropriate then feed and move to voluntarily dismiss the petition for you yes your so yes the client sometimes i'm asking for them up front i'm out i'm telling the client you know you pay your pillion initial fee for our fees plus what the court charges five hundred dollars up front as the ninth circuit fee i know if i'll inform proper popper's i i don't know i don't know that i have i don't recall but it seems like if he if the promise getting in touch with the client the client said i don't have the money now but i'll have it in another week that that would be inappropriate he wouldn't i don't think it would be inappropriate to file a motion for an extension of time yes sure in light of what the c said but i changed my practice now to just i don't want to i don't want to ask the court for an extension of time on paying the fee i just tell the client before we take any new cases you have to and everything else on there and i'm going to trade to them right now using all the features the tickles us so now you can look up and you have all the resources it's a flat fee plus we collect the filing fee and we're into the work and if we don't if we lose contact or they don't cooperate us we will move to a for consulting with ethical feelies and also with my counsel i just decided to junk that old system and just do a flat fee and just include everything in the contract and not not worry about circuit i didn't charge the client additionally but then oral argument in seattle the only thing i try asked for the client was actually for airfare and i i took to mark this case about three years ago so i think one thing that the order to show cause talked about it and i want to make sure that you get this message is the concern that your briefs typically have an adequate discussion of jurisdiction and the standard of review then the will of the arguments so the argument section talks about i guess the main issue in this case was whether there was  an adequate particular social group so that there's a lot of discussion here and there's statements of what the law is what the only one sentence in the entire argument here that actually talks about oh well i want this one he s this law to this case this petition or claim the requisite future persecution is returning mexican national accompanied or visited by his mar united states citizen children who will become targets of indiscriminate and why trust violence in the hands of the drug cartels why should this group be given the treatment that you wanted to get how does it add to this group fit into all the small it's just not enough t can learn and you can learn it and develop in there there are some ways that you can accelerate that develop one way and then i'm going to recommend that you consider something that you consider practicing in the court is to take advantage of the court's mentoring program because you know about that the court has such a program you can you can the mentoring program is comprised of attorneys who are experienced skilled attorneys who have offered to volunteer their services to assist other charities in becoming more proficient practitioners of the court so you can get an attorney to take a look at your brief and give you some ideas and one of those attorneys would in the context of a particular case i think be able to give you feedback on your writing that would that would demonstrate this point for you and maybe that would be a very good way to proceed and i would right so that's another as a second thing here there are programs both in immigration practice and in the ballot practice and that can give you i think helpful guidance on the effect of pretty frightening  i realize a lot of the clients that you represent have are in predicaments where they have little likelihood of success in given court not to file frivolous violence and that as a difficult challenge i think for immigration practitioners but it's when you can do and if you have these tools  to use your best thinking and express said persuasively in your briefs i think you can accomplish it and and discharge your ethical responsibilities both your clients and to the  though so for example one thing i talked about was the way in which you communicate this ability to do it but one of the thing that the orders will cause talked about was briefly in this question of the particular social structure so we noted in the order to show cause that in some instances there was a particular social group that was my take you later identified it to be a i don't want to minimize the behavior that led to the oh i see and i realize my errors but i do the best my ability i have tried to litigate these cases  have they were what are you bitter in terms of the training and implementation time to get those things and that the that takes time you have to input the thing in there they're very integrated with other software so you need several hours of training and when you have your training well let me not to presume anything have you received any training and like the features those one those suited only for immigration but i was more for like forms and uars i didn't choose to take that one even though it was cheaper but since but two hours but you've already got the system you've got to say yes yes i've been watching that's what i've been doing of watching videos that he sent me a link three i watched about three videos so far about half an hour each why do you think that that's going to affect