Government tracking

Every government-side source for a client lives on one place: the Government tab on their page.

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USCIS case status

Track a matter’s receipt numbers and follow them without logging into anything. Add the receipt number from the Form I-797C notice — 13 characters, a 3-letter office code followed by 10 digits, like IOE0912345678. Lexfill checks it against USCIS and then keeps checking daily, so a status change reaches you without anyone remembering to look. A receipt USCIS can’t find, or rejects as invalid, tells you so immediately rather than failing quietly. Transient problems — a rate limit, an outage, a network failure — are retried by the daily check automatically. Ask Lex. At the Desk, ask “what’s the USCIS status on her I-485?” and Lex reads the matter’s receipts from this tab: each receipt number and form, its last stored status, when that status changed, and when Lexfill last checked it. It reads FOIA requests the same way — status, the records asked for, dates and control number. Lex never runs a fresh USCIS check; it gives you the time of the last one, and says so when no receipts are tracked or USCIS tracking isn’t set up.

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Processing times

Ask Lex at the Desk how long a form is taking — “what are current I-130 times?” — or whether a case is past normal processing time. Lex answers from USCIS’s published processing times: every category USCIS publishes for that form, or for one office if you name it, each with the date USCIS published it. On a linked case, Lex compares each receipt’s received date with the published range. The received date comes from the receipt’s USCIS history; without one, Lex estimates it from the receipt number and says it’s an estimate. Lexfill checks for new figures daily. A row whose copy was imported more than 21 days ago is marked stale, and Lex tells you so instead of presenting it as current. The Is this case taking too long? workflow on the Desk home runs this check for you.

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Court Watch

An immigration court that quietly moves a hearing earlier is the most dangerous change in the practice: miss it and your client can be ordered removed in absentia. Court Watch checks the court’s own hearing schedule for every client you choose to watch. Starting a watch. On the client’s Government tab, confirm the A-number and nationality — filled in from the profile when intake already captured them — and press Watch. What happens then. Any change raises an alert, puts the new hearing on your calendar, and — because an earlier hearing means a compressed timeline — files a task to review the client’s payment plan. Subscribe once. Tracked hearings feed a calendar subscription, so they land in the calendar you already live in — Google, Outlook, or Apple. Nothing to set up. Court Watch is ready for every firm — there’s nothing to install or turn on. If your firm keeps A-Numbers in Clio, you can sync them from Clio instead of adding each one by hand. The Court Watch page in the sidebar lists every tracked case and its current hearing across the firm. Every tracked case is checked automatically each morning, and a newly added A-Number is checked right away. Ask Lex. At the Desk, ask about tracked cases by name (the client’s or the respondent’s) or by A-number, typed any way: “Is A233-686-995 tracked?”, “which cases added yesterday haven’t been checked yet?”. Lex answers from what Court Watch has stored — the hearing, and when each case was added, last checked (and whether that check failed) and last checked successfully, in your firm’s time zone. Lex can’t run a check itself.

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Syncing from Clio

If your firm runs its practice in Clio, Court Watch can pick up A-Numbers from your Clio contacts on its own. It’s one more way to add A-Numbers; manual add keeps working alongside it, and everything a watched case does (checks, calendar, alerts, the iPhone Court tab) is the same whichever way it arrived. Setting it up takes about two minutes, once per firm. On the Court Watch page choose Import from Clio, then:

1. Connect. Lexfill shows your Clio account: how many contacts, open matters and custom fields it can see. It reads with your own Clio login, so it only sees the contacts your Clio account can see. If you connected Clio before for document imports, you’ll be asked to Reconnect Clio once to grant the extra read permissions.
2. Fields. Lexfill looks through your contacts and proposes the custom field that holds A-Numbers and the one that holds nationality, with example values and how many contacts have each filled in. Change either if it picked the wrong one.
3. Countries. Each country spelling your firm uses is matched to the immigration court’s own country list. Exact names match on their own, Lex suggests the rest, and anything unclear (like “Congo”) is marked Needs you. You can change any row. Contacts whose country you skip wait under Needs attention until you pick one.
4. Review. Contacts with an open or pending matter and contacts without one are both selected; the second group is marked, since they may be past clients or prospects. Untick anyone you don’t want watched. A-Numbers your firm already watches are linked to the Clio contact, not added twice, and keep their history. Press Start syncing.

After that, it runs by itself. Lexfill checks Clio every night, before the morning court checks, so an A-Number added to a client in Clio is being watched by the next morning. The Clio pill in the Court Watch header shows when it last synced; click it to Sync now.

• New contacts with an A-Number, a known country and an open matter are watched automatically. New contacts without an open matter wait under Needs attention for you to include or set aside.
• When a client’s last open matter closes, their A-Number is removed in Clio, or the contact is deleted, Court Watch stops watching that case and the row says why (for example Stopped · matter closed in Clio). Its history stays. If the matter reopens or the A-Number comes back, watching resumes on its own.
• A changed A-Number in Clio stops the old case and starts watching the new one.
• Your choices win. A case you turned off in Lexfill is never turned back on by a sync, a past client you chose to include keeps being watched, and editing a case’s A-Number or nationality in Lexfill unlinks it from Clio.
• A safety brake. If one sync would stop a large share of your watched cases at once (for example after a Clio permission change), it stops nothing and the pill reads Clio sync paused. Check again once the cause is fixed, or a firm owner or admin can press Stop them.
• Needs attention. Once set up, Import from Clio opens a list of contacts that need a decision (no open matter, an unknown country, or an A-Number that doesn’t read as one), plus Change setup to pick different fields.

Rows that came from Clio carry a small Clio mark. Lexfill only reads from Clio; it never changes anything there. Manage the sync — turn it off, change setup, or remove the Clio data — under Settings → Integrations.

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Court Watch on iPhone

The Lexfill iPhone app has Court Watch on its Court tab, with the same statuses and wording as the web page.

• The list has All, Needs attention and Timeline views with counts. Search by client or respondent name, A-number (with or without dashes), judge or court, and sort by last update, next hearing, client or last checked. Hide names masks names and A-numbers on that phone, which helps when you show your screen.
• A case shows its status, the next hearing (date, time, type and whether it’s in person or by video), the court’s address, phone and Webex link, any appeal or brief deadlines and decisions, and the history of changes. Open case or Open client jumps to the linked case on the Cases tab.
• Add, edit and stop. The + button adds an A-number. From a case’s ••• menu you can correct the A-number or nationality, link the case to a client, or stop watching it. A new or corrected A-number shows Checking… until the court’s answer arrives.
• Notifications. When the court changes a watched case, the phone gets one notification for the changes that land together, instead of one per change. Tap it to open that case, or for several changes, the Needs attention view. Court changes in the in-app bell open the same way. Turn them off on the phone: on the Cases tab, tap your photo at the top right, then Notifications → Court changes (see Notifications).

The phone shows what Lexfill’s checks found: every case is checked each morning, and a new or corrected A-number right away.

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FOIA requests

You can’t advise safely on what you can’t see. Lex builds a USCIS FOIA/Privacy Act request from the record you already hold — the A-File, or specific records such as an I-130, I-485, I-94 or entry records. Ask Lex on a linked matter, or start one from the client’s Government tab. It:

• Fills Form G-639 from the client’s own record and files it in their documents — including the parents’ names USCIS demands but the client’s current form never asked, read from an earlier filing.
• Opens a submission worksheet with every value in the order the portal asks for it.
• Flags what actually closes requests before you submit — the office address entered as the client’s, a blank parent row, a birthdate that reads day-first.
• Tells you what to leave out — no Form G-28, no cover letter, no unrequested ID copies.
• Keeps the record — the control number, the 20-business-day clock, and a nudge when USCIS runs late.