The temporary restoration of 245(i) is manna from heaven for immigration lawyers. A prominent immigration lawyer told us recently that his law firm was taking 50 to 60 appointments a day! By some estimates more than 500,000 petitions are expected to be filed by the April 30 deadline.

A boom is also being experienced by ILW.COM and other immigration sites as visitors feverishly try to make sense of these developments. The result - law office staff are harried with the enormous workload and time pressures.

Tools and techniques to help make law offices more productive take on a special importance during these busy times. This article highlights one of ILW.COM's unique services, case tracking, as a means to streamline status calls to your office and improve the productivity of your office. We will keep this short and to the point!

Since its launch a few months ago, many ILW.COM attorney members have been using our case tracking service to keep clients apprised of case status. The application was particularly designed to address the area of immigration law practice that has been a productivity killer - answering status phone calls from clients.

In a nutshell here is how the application works: a staff member of your law office logs in to our secure site and creates a new case for the client. This case is updated by your staff whenever events dictate. The case tracking system keeps your clients informed via email about the case's progress. Your clients (employers, immigrants) login to our secure site any time of the day to check their status. Employer clients can see the progress of all their cases on a single screen. Result: increased productivity and satisfied clients.

Attorney Alan Lubiner says, "I have just started using case tracking as a result of my clients' requests to be able to get information about their cases on the Internet. So far it has been a great experience. The individual clients are happy, the HR people are happy and it has cut down on the number of routine inquiries that we get."

The 245(i) petitions being filed furiously are expected to have a long life span due to INS backlogs. Law offices may well be overwhelmed with status calls beyond the April 30, 2001, deadline. What better time to explore this time saver?

The ILW.COM staff will be happy to discuss the applicability of case tracking to your practice and train your staff. If you have tried case tracking and are not using it any more or have never tried it - write to support@ilw.com with your phone number, questions and a good time to reach you.

Share your office productivity tips! Write to editor@ilw.com.

We invite you to learn more about Case tracking. The first ten cases are free for ILW.COM members. If you are not a member, sign up at: http://www.ilw.com/membership/.

Answers to common questions can be found at: https://www.ilw.com/secure/CT_FAQ.asp.

Security & privacy issues: https://www.ilw.com/secure/CT_Disclaimer.asp.

Take a guided tour: https://www.ilw.com/secure/CT_Tour1.asp.