Business Practitioner

34
W
12 th Annual
The
omen’s Justice Awards
Mira Mdivani is the
entrepreneur behind a
prominent immigration law firm.
She fell into the niche practice
because of the way certain English words
roll off her tongue.
“They hear the accent, and they presume you know something about international law,” Mdivani says.
When she was 26, she moved to the
United States from Russia to strengthen
her career in business. She’s from a family
of lawyers, and she eventually opted for
law school at the University of MissouriKansas City. Afterward, she focused on
corporate law with Kansas City attorney
John Klamann.
But she quickly found herself fielding
countless inquiries on immigration law.
It was a topic she knew little about, so
she began studying the complex world of
immigration regulation.
In 2004, she started her own practice,
The Mdivani Law Firm, in Overland Park,
Kan. Today, she’s considered a go-to expert on the subject, serving as chairwoman of The Missouri Bar’s Immigration
Law Committee. She also is an adjunct
law professor at her alma mater.
She designed her firm, which embraced
technology and alternative revenue
sources, to help corporations with their
legal immigration needs. The firm also
assists abused women and children with
green cards and visas.
“If you want to become edgy, which
we are, you need to exhibit qualities that
may be perceived as unladylike,” Mdivani
says. “You have to be aggressive. You have
to be willing to stick your neck out, willing to compete. … I’m OK with that.”
And aggressive she is. As many law
firms struggle for business, she has another problem: “We can only take so
many people.”
For employers with immigration concerns, Mdivani started I-9Seminars.com,
a Web site that provides information on
immigration law compliance and forms.
She and her staff record frequent podcasts,
updating listeners on happenings within
Immigration Customs Enforcement.
Through the site, employers — clients
or not — can sign up for training and
seminars that she travels the country to
conduct. And they can buy books she’s
authored, including her newly released
“Employer Immigration Compliance,
Plans, Policies and Procedures.”
“She’s been very creative, very industrious in her work,” says Roger McCrummen,
chairman of the Missouri/Kansas chapter
of the American Immigration Lawyers
Association. “She’s a master at marketing.
That’s not really typical of most lawyers.”
Mdivani grew even more creative when
she combined her love of cooking with her
day job. In her “Cooking with an Accent:
An Immigration Lawyer’s Cookbook,”
she paired each recipe with the real-life
story of someone she represented.
Below a recipe for Beef and Guinness
Stew is the story of an Irish man and a
Chinese woman falling in love. The couple’s courtship kicked into full gear when
an expiring student visa threatened their
romance.
“I was so nervous I laughed throughout
the entire ceremony,” Linh Trieu wrote of
their marriage. “Mira took care of the legal aspects and says, ‘Don’t worry about
anything. I will worry for you.’ ”
— Alyson E. Raletz
April 2010
Mira
Mdivani
Business Practitioner