A Magsingaleno’s book on ineffective immigration counsel published

by MVP

Atty. Tipon with his new book

Atty. Emmanuel S. Tipon’s book on “Ineffective Assistance of Counsel in Removal (Deportation) Proceedings” has been published by Thomson-Reuters, the world’s largest law book publishing firm. The work is published as a series of annotations in Volumes 58, 59 and 60 of American Law Reports. It will later be printed as a stand alone volume. Atty. Tipon’s father is from Magsingal and Atty. Tipon grew up in Magsingal during the war. He is a regular contributor to this web publication.

Atty. Tipon pointed out that in criminal cases, a defendant who loses a case may claim that his lawyer was ineffective and move to reopen the case because an accused has a constitutional right under the Sixth Amendment to effective assistance of counsel. In civil cases, there is no such right of a losing party. However, immigration law is unique in that it is the only civil litigation where a litigant can have a “second bite of the apple” -  by claiming that he or she was a victim of ineffective assistance of counsel – and reopen the proceedings.

The book is the first of its kind that discusses the subject of ineffective assistance of counsel in removal proceedings. The work is divided into three parts. Part I deals with (1) whether or not there is a right to effective assistance of counsel in removal proceedings, (2) what are the threshold requirements for an ineffective assistance claim, such as jurisdiction and the Lozada requirements, and (3) what are the substantive elements to establish a prima facie case of ineffective assistance, such as due process of law, deficient conduct of counsel, and prejudice. Part II deals with particular acts of counsel that have been considered ineffective. Part III deals with particular omissions of counsel that have been considered ineffective.

To produce this book, Atty. Tipon said that he read about 2,000 court decisions in which immigration lawyers were charged by former clients as having been ineffective and as a result the alien client was ordered deported.  According to Atty. Tipon, in the vast majority of cases the second lawyer hired by the alien who accused the first lawyer of being ineffective was himself or herself ineffective because the second lawyer did not know how to establish that the first lawyer was ineffective. The book is intended as a practice guide for immigration lawyers on how to avoid being charged with ineffectiveness and on how to be able to establish that another lawyer was ineffective.

Atty. Tipon graduated from Yale Law School and the University of the Philippines. He  came to the United States in 1971 on a working visa to write law books for The Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Company (LCP) in Rochester, NY. He rose to become a senior editor and trained new legal editors and reviewed the work of other editors. In 1981 he was assigned to Bancroft Whitney Law Book Company, a sister company of LCP, and moved to San Francisco. Thomson-Reuters later acquired both companies. Atty. Tipon continues to write law books for Thomson-Reuters even after retiring, while maintaining an active law practice with his son, Noel, in Hawaii.