How a new immigration law practice cut a family case's USCIS forms from 3–4 hours to 45–60 minutes
Sung Woo Hong founded Hong LLC, a boutique immigration law firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to handle employment-based immigration, family-based petitions and adjustment of status. Each client matter needs 3–4 USCIS forms. Instead of adding automation to a manual practice later, he built the firm around Instafill.ai from the start, and a typical three-form family case now takes 45–60 minutes instead of 3–4 hours.
At a glance
- Company Hong LLC
- Industry Immigration law
- Location Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Forms I-485, I-765, I-130, G-1145 and G-1650
- Volume Several client matters a month, 3–4 USCIS forms each
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Results
~75% less time on a typical family case
45–60 min per three-form family case, down from 3–4 hours
1 profile per client, reused on every form - Catalog forms Form I-485 Application to Adjust Status, Form I-765 Application for Employment Authorization, Form I-130 Petition for Alien Relative, Form G-1145 e-Notification, Form G-1650 Authorization for ACH Transactions
- Form categories USCIS forms, Immigration forms
The challenge
Mr. Hong said in his first consultation: "I'm trying to create and design a very efficient and automated AI-driven system."
Immigration work runs on government forms of 6 to 20+ pages, and the same names, addresses, dates of birth and prior entries go into every one of them. Typing them again on each form invites typos and inconsistent formatting. The details come from passports, driver's licenses and visas, so they also had to be read off those documents first. USCIS updates its forms regularly, and some clients still need an older edition for a case filed under earlier rules.
The data is sensitive, too. Mr. Hong needed client information encrypted in transit and at rest, and a way to delete it securely once a filing was done.
The solution
The firm keeps a reusable profile for each client, holding the name, address, date of birth, Social Security number and contact details, with the client's passport and driver's license attached. Through filling from documents, Instafill.ai reads the text off those scans and PDFs, standardizes the formatting and fills the matching fields.
To prepare a form, the firm picks the form and the client's profile. Instafill.ai fills in the data, ticks the right boxes and formats dates the way USCIS requires. Biographical data, address history, employment, education and family relationships are kept once and read the same on every petition. Each form was fine-tuned once and is now filled on demand.
Client data is encrypted in transit and at rest on Microsoft servers in Texas and is never used to train AI models. Filling can be set to remove everything right after processing, and automatic data cleanup can delete uploaded documents and filled PDFs once the completed forms are downloaded.
The results
| Form | By hand | With Instafill.ai | Saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| I-485 | 90–120 min | 20–25 min | 70–80% |
| I-765 | 30–45 min | 8–10 min | 75–80% |
| I-130 | 45–60 min | 10–15 min | 75–80% |
| G-1145 | 5–10 min | 2–3 min | 60–70% |
| Family case, 3 forms | 3–4 h | 45–60 min | ~75% |
Form completion takes 75–80% less time across the firm's forms. As a solo practice, Hong LLC can spend the hours saved on client consultations and legal strategy, and grow without hiring staff to fill forms.
The forms Hong LLC fills
The I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status, is the main form for getting a green card from inside the United States: biographical information, immigration history, employment, family relationships and admissibility. The I-765, Application for Employment Authorization, is the work permit application during adjustment of status, for Optional Practical Training and for other employment categories. The I-130, Petition for Alien Relative, is how U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents establish a family relationship, with biographical data for both the petitioner and the beneficiary.
The one-page G-1145 asks USCIS for an email or text message when it accepts an application or petition, and the G-1650, Authorization for ACH Transactions, authorizes payment by ACH.
