A journalism career cut short by corporate layoffs. An essay contest about a father who emigrated from Pakistan at eighteen. A law school internship that opened a door to business immigration and never closed. Jihan Merlin's path into immigration law was anything but planned, and that willingness to follow unexpected turns is exactly what makes her one of the most forward-thinking voices in the field today.

After more than a decade practicing at two of the world's most prominent immigration law firms, Merlin took a leap. She left traditional legal practice to become Head of Strategy at Alma, where she now sits at the intersection of legal expertise, product development, and client experience. Her mission: to help reshape how immigration services are delivered in an era where speed, cost, and quality are no longer nice-to-haves but non-negotiables.

"I really wanted to flex more into doing things that were going to help me grow professionally," Merlin says. "And I thought that technology is the future. I want to be in the front seat of the technology revolution that's reshaping our industry and professional services in general."

Jihan Merlin's Journey: From Foreign Policy Magazine to Immigration Law

Merlin's origin story begins far from the courtroom. As a journalism major working at Foreign Policy magazine in Washington, D.C., she was building a career in media when the publication was sold to the Washington Post. The resulting layoffs eliminated her position and forced a crossroads moment.

"I said, okay, I need to figure out what I'm going to do. Am I going to get another crummy paid job in the media industry, or am I going to do something else that involves writing?"

She chose law school at Boston College, where chance intervened again. An essay writing contest for an immigration-focused spring break trip asked students to share a personal connection to immigration. Merlin wrote about her father, who had arrived in the United States from Pakistan as a teenager. She won the trip and began working with the National Immigrant Justice Center, her first real exposure to immigration practice.

From there, she secured an externship at Fragomen as a law clerk, a position she paid law school tuition to hold. "I can unpack that in so many ways," she says with a laugh, "but it was a great opportunity and it got my foot in the door of business immigration."

That door led to over a decade at major immigration firms, including Fragomen and Berry Appleman & Leiden (BAL), before Alma came calling with something entirely new.

What Does the Head of Strategy at Alma Do?

The role Merlin occupies at Alma did not exist before she arrived. Together with the company's leadership, she designed a position that bridges the legal team, the product team, and the go-to-market team, connecting dots that traditionally stay siloed inside immigration firms.

On any given day, she might be speaking with prospective clients about the features they need from their immigration programs, collaborating with engineers on product improvements, or advising on high-level strategic decisions. She has stepped back from day-to-day casework, a significant shift after years of hands-on petition drafting, but the trade-off has opened up new dimensions of professional growth.

"It's very different. I've been doing casework for a long time and I'm not doing very much casework anymore, which is an interesting change. But overall, it's just a very dynamic role."

The Three Pain Points Reshaping Corporate Immigration Programs

Through her client-facing work, Merlin hears the same frustrations over and over again from businesses managing immigration programs. She distills them into three categories that now inform Alma's entire company strategy.

Speed. Things move too slowly. Case processing timelines, attorney turnaround on applications, even simple email responses drag on in ways that frustrate both employers and employees. Merlin believes responsiveness should be measured in hours, not days. "It shouldn't take even 24 hours to get back to a simple email," she says. "People should be able to get responses within a few hours."

Cost. Immigration legal fees remain stubbornly high relative to what technology can now automate. "It should not cost $10,000 for a PERM process," Merlin says. "There are so many opportunities to automate it and make things less expensive."

Quality. This one cuts two ways. For corporate clients, quality means smooth processes, minimal denials, data visibility, and on-demand reporting so they can slice their immigration data however they need it. For employees, quality means fast turnaround times and a responsive team. Alma monitors email SLAs in real time alongside case processing benchmarks, a level of radical transparency that Merlin sees as essential.

"We don't have to wait until the end of the month to see how the vendor is doing," she says. "You can just see it all in real time. These are the cases in process, and these are the ones where you have a past-due SLA."

Jihan Merlin on AI in Immigration Law: Smarter Systems, Better Lawyering 

When the conversation turns to artificial intelligence, Merlin is quick to clarify that she is not an engineer. What she is, however, is someone with a clear vision of where the technology can take immigration practice, and a healthy respect for what it cannot yet do.

Her excitement centers on AI's potential to digest massive amounts of legal data, including every AAO decision, every RFE pattern, every regulatory update on a given topic, and apply that knowledge to individual cases in real time. Imagine a system that automatically flags risks, surfaces relevant precedent, and provides initial legal analysis before an attorney even opens the file.

"If we could just take all of the knowledge around immigration that we've had to build up over decades, but it's somewhere out there anyway, it's in the case law, and just have it at our fingertips all the time. I'd love that."

The vision she describes is an immigration practice where technology handles the heavy operational lift while attorneys focus on strategy and judgment. Documents can be uploaded, systems can organize the record and generate initial drafts, and attorneys review, refine, and take full responsibility for the final legal analysis and filing.

“Technology can already assist with the first pass at organizing a case and identifying issues,” Merlin says. “But immigration law still requires experienced attorneys exercising judgment and strategy. The goal isn’t to replace lawyers altogether. It’s to give great lawyers better tools.”

She also discussed the idea of a more streamlined, technology-assisted workflow, where documents can be uploaded, systems generate an initial draft and surface key legal considerations, and attorneys review, refine, and stand behind the final filing. In her view, the industry may be closer to that reality than many practitioners realize.

At the same time, Merlin acknowledges that adopting new technology requires openness within the profession. Some tasks that historically required hours of manual review may soon be assisted by intelligent systems. But she believes that shift ultimately strengthens the role of attorneys by allowing them to focus their time on what matters most: legal judgment, strategy, and advising clients through complex situations.

Advice for Immigration Attorneys: Embrace AI or Get Left Behind

When asked what guidance she would offer fellow immigration attorneys on AI adoption, Merlin does not mince words.

"Don't be afraid of it. Adopt it. If you do not know how to do it, you will be left behind."

She encourages attorneys to use AI for legal research, drafting, and any workflow improvements that their firm's privacy and compliance guidelines allow. But she is equally clear about the guardrails. She urges practitioners to check privacy settings on tools like ChatGPT, toggle off any features that feed data back into model training, and clear all usage with firm leadership and IT teams before incorporating AI into client work.

On the client side, she advocates for transparency. "Some clients may be afraid of the word AI," she says, "but they need to understand if you're going to use software that reads their immigration documents. Have that built into the contracts. Have those disclosures so that you're protected."

Her compliance shortlist is practical: upgrade to a paid AI subscription for better performance, disable data training toggles, be transparent with clients in engagement agreements, and never use AI with client data without authorization.

How the U.S. Government Is Using AI in Immigration (and What It Means for Practitioners)

Merlin recently participated in a webinar with Jonathan McHale, a former USCIS executive, where the conversation focused on how the government itself is deploying artificial intelligence. The implications for practitioners are significant.

While government agents are apparently not officially authorized to use AI for drafting Requests for Evidence, Merlin notes that some RFEs are beginning to read suspiciously like machine-generated text. "I can recognize AI-generated content," she says. "When you've seen it, you can kind of tell sometimes if it's not edited."

More consequentially, the government is using AI to communicate between agencies and identify fraud. Merlin cites a specific instance where a discrepancy between an address listed on a DS-160 visa application and a later I-485 adjustment of status application was flagged, something that would have been nearly impossible to catch manually across systems and years of filings.

"I never would have thought that was going to happen," she says. "Technology had to be working in the background to identify those kinds of things. And that's kind of scary."

For practitioners, the takeaway is clear: the government's ability to cross-reference data across forms, agencies, and time periods is growing rapidly. Accuracy and consistency in filings have never mattered more.

The "WebMD Effect": Why Self-Petitioners Should Use AI Carefully

Merlin draws an apt analogy when discussing how immigrants themselves are using AI tools. She compares it to what happened in medicine when WebMD first gave patients access to diagnostic information that was previously the sole domain of physicians.

"Increasingly we've seen clients, particularly in the self-petitioning context, put the drafted petition through ChatGPT and have that thing suggest edits to it," she says. "It's kind of like going to your doctor with WebMD and saying, 'This is what I think I have.'"

She sees the tool as genuinely useful for helping people understand immigration requirements, compliance obligations, and general eligibility questions. But she draws a firm line at relying on it for consequential decisions.

"Don't assume that ChatGPT is going to give you accurate travel advice and then go rely on that and leave the country," she warns. "We're not there yet. Don't put yourself in a position where you can be made vulnerable by those kinds of mistakes and hallucinations."

How Alma Maintains High Approval Rates in a Challenging Environment

When it comes to case outcomes, Merlin points to a combination of talent and technology. Alma hires experienced attorneys who can craft strong legal arguments, a necessity in an environment where AI alone cannot produce a polished petition. But the firm also uses AI strategically to enhance case quality.

One example she shares involves complex cases where a petitioner may have authored a 200-page book or produced extensive research on a specialized topic. AI helps the legal team quickly summarize the material and generate different framing options for the petitioner's endeavor, setting the groundwork for a stronger legal strategy without replacing attorney judgment.

"It doesn't substitute legal judgment," she says, "but it helps to summarize issues that may not be legal but help us put forth a stronger argument on behalf of the person. And it does it much faster."

The "What If" Mindset: Jihan Merlin's Philosophy on Innovation

Perhaps the most revealing moment in the conversation comes near the end, when Merlin describes the philosophy that guides her work at Alma.

"I just go forth with this job assuming that everything is possible," she says. "What if companies didn't have to spend hours and hours sorting and filtering their resumes? What if we could build something that helped organize it for them? Just assume everything is possible and then have the engineers prove me wrong."

She pauses, then adds: "Fortunately, we have wonderful engineers who are building incredible things, and they never really say no."

That blend of ambition and pragmatism defines her approach to a profession in flux. She is candid about the tension that comes with working in professional services during a technological revolution. The same innovations that make the work thrilling also threaten to upend the business model that has sustained immigration law for decades.

"Once the cat's out of the bag that it really doesn't need to take that much time to put together a petition, you need to be the firm that can do it as quickly or quicker than anybody else," she says. "That's why it's so nerve-wracking, but also exciting."

For Merlin, the only losing move is to stand still.

"We live in this world. It's happening," she says. "From a professional perspective, you've got to know what it is, how to recognize it, and how to use it."

This article is part of the LegalBridge Magazine series spotlighting leaders in immigration law and global mobility.