The person sitting across the desk may describe themselves as an immigration specialist, a consultant, a paralegal running a document service, or a notario, and none of those words carries any legal weight in a federal immigration case. Two categories do. Everything else is either assistance that stops short of representation, or the unauthorized practice of law. The distinction matters most at the moment a form is signed and filed, because the government will only recognize a representative who fits one of those two categories, and a filing prepared by anyone else still arrives under the applicant's own name and signature.
The two categories the government will recognize
The first is an attorney: someone licensed and in good standing with the bar of any state, the District of Columbia, or a United States territory, and not currently under any order suspending or restricting their practice. The license need not come from the state where the client lives, because immigration is federal. The second is an accredited representative, a non-attorney approved by the Department of Justice to work for a specific nonprofit organization that the Executive Office for Immigration Review has recognized. Accreditation is tied to that organization, so it does not travel with the person to a private office.
Accreditation comes in two grades, and the difference is worth knowing before a case moves. Partial accreditation permits appearance before the Department of Homeland Security, which covers USCIS interviews and filings. Full accreditation adds the immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals. Someone with partial accreditation can competently handle a naturalization application or a family petition, and would still need to hand off a case that lands in removal proceedings. Asking which grade a representative holds is a fair, ordinary question, and the answer is a matter of public record.
Verifying a bar license, and reading what the record says
Every state bar publishes a searchable directory of licensed attorneys. What a careful reader checks is not just that a name appears, but the four details attached to it: current status, the date of admission, the jurisdiction, and whether any public discipline is listed. Status should read active and in good standing. Inactive, suspended, resigned, or administratively suspended for unpaid dues all mean the person cannot represent you now, whatever they said on the phone. If the attorney names a firm, the directory address should broadly match the office you visited.
Bar records are also where disciplinary history surfaces, and the entries vary from a private admonition years ago over a missed deadline to a public reprimand, a period of suspension, or disbarment. A single old entry in an otherwise long record is context rather than a verdict. A pattern of client-fund complaints, or discipline in more than one state, is a different signal entirely. Separately, the Executive Office for Immigration Review maintains a public list of practitioners disciplined specifically in immigration practice, which sometimes shows names a state directory does not.
Checking an accreditation listing
The Department of Justice publishes the roster of recognized organizations and the accredited representatives attached to each one, and it is the only place that question gets answered. Three things belong on the list together: the organization's name, the representative's name under it, and an expiration date, because both recognition and accreditation run for fixed terms and must be renewed. An expired listing is not a technicality. If the organization appears but the individual does not, that person is staff, not a representative, and their work has to be supervised and filed by someone who is on the roster.
Why notario means one thing abroad and another here
In much of Latin America, a notario público is a highly trained legal professional, often law-trained and licensed, who drafts and authenticates significant legal instruments. In the United States, a notary public is commissioned to witness signatures and administer oaths, and nothing more; the title confers no authority to give legal advice, select a visa category, or appear before an agency. That gap in meaning is the reason so many immigration fraud cases begin with the word, and it is why several states now restrict who may advertise using it. The Federal Trade Commission oversees deceptive business practices of this kind and takes complaints about them.
Consultants and typing services occupy the narrow ground that remains. Someone may lawfully translate documents, transcribe answers you supply onto a form, and charge for that clerical work, provided they do not advise you on what to claim, which relief to seek, or how to answer a question. When advice starts, authorization is required. The clean test is the signature line: an attorney files a Form G-28 or EOIR-28 entering their appearance, an accredited representative does the same, and a preparer who is neither must disclose their limited role instead.
Two searches, both free, both public, settle nearly all of this before any money changes hands: the bar directory for the state named on the business card, and the Department of Justice roster for anyone claiming accreditation. A representative who welcomes those checks, and volunteers the jurisdiction and organization needed to run them, has told you most of what you wanted to know.
