Written submissions and tailor-made country conditions research for Canadian immigration practitioners carrying more contentious files than the week can hold.
Second Chair works only for licensed immigration law practitioners: lawyers, paralegals and immigration consultants, on files where they are the representative of record. We do not take instructions from the public and we do not act for applicants. We are not a representation service: we do not appear, we do not advise your client, and we do not take a place in your retainer.
A contentious file lands on a Tuesday. It is a good file, worth real fees, and you already know what the rest of the month looks like.
From there it usually goes one of three ways. It goes to another firm. It takes your weekends. Or it waits, because the deadlines already on the calendar do not move for it.
There is a fourth option
You keep the client, the relationship and the fee, and the drafting comes back to you finished.
We draft. You sign.
You send us the file. We send back a submission ready for your review, your revisions and your signature.
Three rules we do not bend
Not to clarify a date, not to chase a document, not once. Every question comes back to you, and the relationship stays exactly where you built it.
We work from the record you send us. We do not approach witnesses, chase documents or source material from your client, because none of that can be done without speaking to people and we speak to no one.
Where you put new material in front of us, we build the argument for its admissibility and its weight. Obtaining it stays with you, which is where it belongs. If something is missing, we flag it and wait.
What we send is finished work, not a starting point. It is also entirely yours: it carries your name, answers to your judgment, and can be changed to the last comma without a word from us.
Nothing leaves our hands that we would not be content to see filed. Nothing is filed until you are.
These are not disclaimers. They are why the drafting can leave your desk while the client, the relationship and the conduct of the matter stay exactly where they are.
What you can order
A finished file is all three parts together: the country conditions report, the submissions built on it, and the evidence compiled and indexed against them. You forward one email.
Humanitarian and Compassionate applications. Pre-Removal Risk Assessments. Section 44 submissions. Refugee Appeal Division memoranda.
Each is written to the test that governs it and to nothing else. Carry the register of one proceeding into another and nothing looks wrong until the refusal arrives.
An H&C and a PRRA answer no one. There is no filing on the other side, which means every exit the officer might reach for has to be closed before they reach for it.
A section 44 submission has one job: to keep the file from being referred. Subsection 44(2) says the Minister may refer. That word is the argument.
On a RAD we write the memorandum under rule 3(3)(g), and nothing else in the appellant's record. Every finding in the reasons is taken against the record that produced it, paragraph by paragraph: what the member found, what the page relied on actually says, and whether the distance between them is an error the Division can correct. Rule 3(4) caps the memorandum at 30 pages and we write to that.
We do not assemble the appellant's record, order transcripts or complete forms, and the memorandum carries no country conditions report, because that would be new evidence. Whether new evidence is filed is your call, not ours.
Every authority pinpointed to the paragraph relied on. Every quotation checked inside the paragraph the footnote claims. Headnotes are not sources. Nothing asserted that the record cannot carry.
Written to be read by someone with two hundred files on their desk.
Where a panel sets a written submissions schedule during an admissibility hearing and you want that drafted, it is a different piece of work on its own timetable, and we quote it separately.
A report about the country is not evidence about your client. It is background, and background is what an officer is free to set aside. So it is built for the person in front of you: region, ethnicity, religion, gender, political exposure, occupation, who was left behind, whatever the risk actually turns on.
State protection. Canada (Attorney General) v Ward, [1993] 2 SCR 689 at 724-725, presumes the state can protect, and rebutting that presumption takes clear and convincing confirmation. Flores Carrillo v Canada (MCI), 2008 FCA 94 at paras 20-21 and 30, sets the standard at a balance of probabilities and fixes what the evidence has to be: reliable is not enough, it must be relevant, reliable, probative and convincing. A general assertion of corruption is none of those, and a refusal will quote it back at you. What clears the bar is the operational record: what that police force does with a complaint of this kind, in that district, evidenced.
Internal flight alternative. Rasaratnam v Canada (MEI), [1992] 1 FC 706 (CA) at 710, asks about the proposed place, not the country. Thirunavukkarasu v Canada (MEI), [1994] 1 FC 589 (FCA), asks whether it would be unduly harsh for this claimant to go there. An IFA proposed without both tested, for that city, has not been tested.
And they are not one question. A claimant who never went above the first officer is a Ward problem. A claimant who never tried to move is a Rasaratnam problem. Answered in the same paragraph, the submission hands the officer his own error back.
Sources dated, weighed, and pulled from beyond the National Documentation Package where the package is thin or stale. Contradictory material met head on rather than left for the officer to find.
Every source cited, dated, and pinpointed to the proposition it supports, so that the record and the submissions point at each other. On a PRRA, every source is also dated against the last refusal and carried with its section 113(a) justification, because a source the applicant could have filed before is a source the officer does not have to read.
Available on its own, without a submission. Most practitioners start here.
How it works
You send the file with a one-page intake sheet. We run a conflicts check against a maintained database before anything is opened.
We confirm scope, price and delivery date in writing within one business day, or we tell you exactly what is missing.
The work arrives on the committed date. From three business days for a country conditions report on its own. From seven for a complete file.
Two revision rounds are included, three business days each.
The clock starts when the file is complete, not when it is sent. If something is missing we tell you what, on the day it arrives, and the clock starts when it lands. Nothing sits silently. The date we commit to is the date, and if we cannot meet it you hear that when you send the file, not the day it is due.
What it costs
A complete file costs the same whether it is an H&C, a PRRA, a section 44 submission or a RAD memorandum. No hourly billing, no meter running while you think. You know the number and the date before a single page is written, and neither moves.
Every file is quoted as a complete package: the country conditions report, the submissions built on it, and the evidence compiled and indexed against them. If you already hold a country conditions report we will not rebuild it: the fee comes down and we draft on yours. If the report is all you need, that is priced on its own.
Two revision rounds are included in every fee. Revision means refining argument, structure and tone. New facts, a new theory of the case, or evidence that arrives late are not revisions, and we quote those separately.
Volume terms from six files a month. Expedited delivery is sometimes possible and never assumed. Ask before you commit to a date and we will tell you at that moment whether the calendar allows it.
The rest is simpler than it looks. Work you cannot fit into a month is work you turn down, and turning it down costs more than sending it out. Most practices start with a single report, on one file, and decide from there.
Rates go out with a writing sample the same day you ask for them.
Confidentiality, conflicts and custody
Conflicts are screened at intake against a maintained database before a file is opened. A written confidentiality agreement is executed before the first transfer.
Files move by zero-knowledge encrypted transfer on Canadian infrastructure, with data held in Canadian data centres, privacy policy built on PIPEDA. Encryption happens on the device before anything leaves it, which means the provider cannot read your client's file even if compelled to try. Access to each transfer is controlled, and it is closed once the file has been received.
Every file moves through that one channel, in both directions, and nowhere else. One chain of custody, one place where the record of what was sent and when it was sent lives, and no argument later about what did or did not arrive.
Files are destroyed or returned on your instruction at closing.
Who does the work
The work reaches you the way a law clerk's draft reaches you. We prepare it, you read it, and you decide what is filed. Nothing goes to a decision-maker on our judgment.
The drafting is contentious immigration work and has been since 2018: Humanitarian and Compassionate applications, Pre-Removal Risk Assessments, section 44(1) reports and responses, Refugee Appeal Division memoranda, and country conditions evidence built from the ground up.
Nothing is offshored. Every authority we cite is pinpointed to the paragraph that carries it, so you can check it against the source before you sign.
You remain the representative of record throughout. The file is filed on your judgment and your signature, it carries your name, and ours appears nowhere in it, on it, or in any correspondence about it.
We draft in English. Files that must be drafted in French we do not take.
Tell us what you practise and what tends to pile up. We reply the same day with the current rates and a sample of the work, so you are deciding on writing rather than on a promise.
Most practitioners begin with a country conditions package. Country conditions research is carried as a disbursement in the ordinary course, alongside expert reports and translations, and this sits in the same place. It costs less than an afternoon of your time, it carries no advocacy risk, and it tells you everything you need to know about whether we write the way you write.
Or write to inquiries@secondchairdrafting.ca.