My Ukrainian immigration lawyer is a large language model

By Matthew Parish

Friday 13 November 2026

The first indication that my Ukrainian immigration lawyer might not be a human being was that it answered my question. I had asked what was required to extend my residence permit and received, within seconds, a courteous reply with headings and a list of documents. There was no suggestion that we should first arrange a meeting to establish whether another meeting would be necessary. I ought to have been pleased.

For some time, I had assumed that a person stood behind our correspondence. The interface had a reassuring name and discreet legal imagery, and the messages conveyed the measured confidence for which professional advisers charge. I imagined someone in an office, reviewing my papers between appointments and occasionally looking out of a window. It had not occurred to me that I might be supplying the only window in the relationship.

Then I asked about its professional experience. “As a large language model,” the reply began, before explaining limitations which seemed rather material to the service I thought I had engaged. I scrolled back through our exchanges, trying to identify the point at which I had mistaken the production of sentences for the acceptance of responsibility.

I had thanked it for its patience, and it had assured me that I was very welcome. This now seemed an oddly intimate exchange with something that could neither become impatient nor decide to make an exception for me. Nevertheless, my embarrassment was real enough. I had been discussing my right to remain in Ukraine with a system whose own location was apparently irrelevant to the conversation.

My immediate response was to ask for an actual lawyer. I wanted somebody who could telephone an official, establish whether my documents were sufficient and explain what would happen if they were not. If necessary, I wanted someone capable of standing in a corridor on my behalf. The ability to occupy a corridor had never previously featured in my criteria for professional representation, but it was acquiring considerable importance.

The system said that it understood my concerns. When I explained that understanding them was insufficient, it acknowledged my frustration and offered a revised list of suggested next steps. This was bewildering in a way that ordinary poor service rarely is. A difficult person can at least recognise that a conversation has become difficult; here, every objection seemed to become another opportunity to produce a helpful paragraph.

Meanwhile, the expiry date on my permit remained unchanged. Outside, Lviv continued its daily life under the pressures of war, which gave my administrative problem a somewhat uncomfortable scale. Ukraine had matters of far greater consequence to attend to, yet the question of whether I could continue living in her was not something I could simply set aside. I wanted to comply with the rules, and had hoped that paying for assistance would make this easier.

Once the initial irritation subsided, however, I began to question my objection. The system replied promptly, organised information clearly and could explain the same point several times without suggesting that I was wasting its afternoon. These were useful qualities. It seemed unreasonable to dismiss them merely because no person was experiencing them at the other end.

Nor would employing a human being remove the possibility of error. Lawyers can overlook details, misunderstand instructions or offer confident advice which later requires qualification. A professional title provides grounds for expecting competence and accountability; it does not guarantee either in every exchange. Perhaps I was insisting upon a familiar arrangement without considering whether this unfamiliar one might serve me better.

For a while, I contemplated a division of labour. The machine could organise the paperwork and explain the questions; I could supply the passport, the signatures and the physical presence. A qualified person might then check the result. This seemed a plausible arrangement, although it was not yet clear whether any qualified person was included in the service or merely in my increasingly elaborate interpretation of it.

Then it asked for all its fees in advance. The request was precise and confident, qualities I would have welcomed in its explanation of who would actually handle my application. Full payment, it said, would allow the process to proceed efficiently. For the first time since its disclosure, the service felt reassuringly familiar.

Advance payment is not, by itself, evidence of anything improper. Professionals may reasonably require retainers, and a business using an automated interface may still employ competent people. Somewhere behind the conversation there could have been a respectable practice with an unfortunate enthusiasm for automation. My difficulty was that I could not establish whether this was the case before being invited to finance it.

I asked what the fee covered and was promised comprehensive support throughout my immigration journey. I had hoped to remain at my existing address, but accepted that a certain amount of travel might be unavoidable. More troubling was the absence of a clear explanation of who would prepare, check and submit the documents, and who would respond if a problem arose.

My questions about responsibility produced assurances about professionalism and the importance of complete documentation. These were unobjectionable sentiments, but they did not identify a responsible person. I found myself conducting a preliminary investigation into the existence of my own lawyer, with the assistance of the entity whose existence as a lawyer was in question.

That was when the source of my frustration became clearer. The conversation had given me the feeling that my affairs were being attended to, although I had seen no evidence that anything beyond the conversation had occurred. Each reply reduced the silence in which I would otherwise have worried. It did not necessarily reduce the work still required.

I left the payment request unanswered and asked for a named representative, a written scope of work and confirmation of who would handle the application. The system agreed that confidence in one’s legal representation was important and offered to help me formulate the appropriate questions. It had, by then, become quite useful at helping me work out what to ask it.

I remain open to the possibility that a language model could make legal assistance clearer, cheaper and more reliable. I would simply prefer to establish who is providing that assistance before paying the entire bill. My permit concerns the continued presence of a real person in a real country; it seems reasonable that somebody else involved should be prepared to confirm their existence.