Daniel Romano, Managing AttorneyIn an interview Daniel Romano, Managing Attorney at Kalman Samuels, Attorneys, shares insights on how they help companies across different industries bring in talent by streamlining the immigration process.
Please provide us with a brief overview of Kalman Samuels, Attorneys.
Established in 1957, we have become a leader in international family law. To solve family law issues where one or both parents are from abroad or different jurisdictions, our clients often approach us to help them with the immigration of their family members. Our attorneys have been delivering immigration consultations to clients for a long period and have handled almost every aspect of immigration over the years. As a result, they have developed significant expertise in immigration law. In time, we decided to establish a separate immigration department to offer immigration consulting services to individuals and companies looking to immigrate talent to Canada.
Please throw more light on your immigration services.
We serve companies of all sizes across financial, IT, health, and other industries, either by offering consultation services alone or helping them in the overall immigration process. On the one hand, through consulting, we can help clients anticipate the time required to bring in a candidate and predict the possibility of successfully launching and completing an immigration program. Our clients often have questions related to Labor Market Impact Assessment (LMIA). For example, they’d want to know whether they need different LMIA to hire candidates from different parts of the world or if they can use the same for all. We address all such queries, be it related to hiring a candidate with a certain level of expertise or in regard to the timeline of getting an appeal approved. We also answer the questions of recruiters from other countries that serve our clients to help them search and shortlist qualified candidates.
On the other hand, we help clients navigate through the entire immigration process. This includes developing an immigration profile for the clients’ that would be later used as a template for recruiting candidates from all over the globe. We use the same template for all candidates with little modification, depending on their roles. We work on a person-by-person basis to bring capable candidates to the companies.
From the Work Permit (open or employer-specific), Canadian Experience (express entry), and Quebec experience, to Quebec Skilled Worker Program, we cover all immigration categories and help individuals proceed to the next step of their immigration process, when they decide to stay in Canada.
Individuals familiar with one or more languages often have an advantage when they want to convert their work permit into permanent residency. That’s why we always advise candidates to become familiar with multiple languages over time if they intend to reside in Canada permanently.
What is the methodology that you follow while catering to your clients?
A typical client engagement begins with LMIA to thoroughly understand their company and the needed employer-specific work permit services. Then, through in-depth interviews and questionnaires, we collect the necessary knowledge to develop a candidate profile.
We serve companies of all sizes across financial, IT, health, and other industries either by offering consultation services alone or helping them in the overall immigration process
What sets you apart from other players in the immigration space?
Our team is comprised of individuals from different nationalities, with only a few of our attorneys born in Canada. They’ve gone through the immigration process themselves and continue doing the immigration process professionally after completing their equivalencies and becoming attorneys in Canada. As a result, they have a very deep understanding and knowledge of the immigration processes and their challenges. The experience and compassion of our multilingual attorneys and staff helps us to understand the candidates’ questions and concerns to better serve them and give us a competitive edge over others.
Also, we follow a working model where support staff and paralegals look after the files, complete mundane aspects of the immigration applications, and enable attorneys to focus on the more critical, difficult aspects of purely legal work. This helps us to deliver our services in a cost-efficient manner.
Could you share with us a customer success story?
A recruiting company faced a low success rate even after investing significant money and resources in bringing in candidates. We assessed their situation and realized that their strategy was based on a rather false premise of focusing on volume hiring and paying a lower rate per candidate. We suggested the client raise the rate per candidate and focus on quality analysis of candidates. We encouraged the client to screen the candidates beforehand to ensure they select only qualified and capable candidates. This helped them have a higher success rate from the beginning and bring in quality workers with the paperwork done correctly. The client could eventually source the right candidates cost-effectively.
What does the roadmap look like for Kalman Samuels. Attorneys?
We are doing pro bono work for Ukrainian refugees coming in on a temporary three-year visa. As we receive significant traction for immigration services, we plan to hire more attorneys and paralegals to handle this demand and continue delivering high-quality services. While we are helping HR departments with their recruitment and bringing in candidates, we are looking for ours, simultaneously.
