Written submissions and tailor-made country conditions research for Canadian immigration practitioners carrying more contentious files than the week can hold.
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.
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 a file can leave your desk on Monday without opening a single new risk.
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. Written responses to section 44(1) reports and submissions on Minister's Delegate review. Refugee Appeal Division submissions.
Structured to the framework the decision-maker is required to apply, and written to be read by someone with two hundred files on their desk. Every authority pinpointed to the paragraph relied on. Every quotation verified against the source document rather than a headnote or a summary. Every proposition anchored to something that is actually in the record. Nothing asserted that the file cannot carry.
Where a complex file genuinely calls for written submissions in a hearing, we quote that separately rather than fold it into a standard fee.
Not a bundle of downloaded reports. A country conditions report 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.
And built to the questions the decision-maker will actually ask. State protection addressed at the operational level rather than the legislative one, because a statute on paper has never protected anyone. Any internal flight alternative tested on the conditions in the proposed city, not the conditions in the country. Adequacy measured against what the evidence shows is delivered, not what is promised. Sources dated, weighed, and drawn from beyond the National Documentation Package wherever the package is thin or has gone stale. Contradictory material met directly instead of 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.
The documents you already hold, organized into a file-ready package, indexed and cross-referenced to the submissions so that every argument can be traced to its page in a single step.
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. Three business days for a country conditions report on its own. 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
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 and we will not charge you for it. If the report is all you need, that is priced on its own.
Two revision rounds are included in every fee. Past the second round we bill by the hour, and we would rather never send that invoice: the rate exists so that rounds end, not as a line of business. 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 before touching them rather than absorbing them quietly and missing your date.
Two things we do not take: Federal Court work of any kind, and files that must be drafted in French. English-language administrative and tribunal work is the entire practice, done properly.
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 and what it would cost, since work brought forward is priced against what it displaces.
The country conditions report is the one thing here your client can be billed for directly. Practitioners already carry expert and country evidence as a disbursement at cost, and this sits in the same place. Ordering it does not touch your margin.
And a file you turn away earns nothing. The H&C you cannot fit into the month goes to someone else, at full value. Capturing it is not a cost. It is revenue that did not exist.
Ask for the current rate card and we will send it the same day, together with a writing sample so you can see the work before you decide.
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: Toronto owned and operated, 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. Links are password protected and they expire.
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.
Our engagement agreement caps liability at the fees paid on the file, records that you exercised independent professional judgment, and confirms that we had no contact with your client.
Who does the work
Every file is drafted by licensed practitioners who have been doing contentious immigration work since 2018: Humanitarian and Compassionate applications, Pre-Removal Risk Assessments, section 44(1) reports and responses, Refugee Appeal Division submissions, and country conditions evidence built from the ground up.
Nothing is offshored and no unlicensed hand touches your file.
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 start with a single country conditions report: billable to the client as a disbursement, delivered in three business days, and enough to tell you whether we write the way you write.
Or write to inquiries@secondchairdrafting.ca.