Jacobs & Schlesinger LLP

Focus and practice areas

Immigration is the firm's whole field of work, run from San Diego, California. Ginger Jacobs co-founded the firm in 2004, and that focus has held ever since. The firm handles asylum, employment visas, investor visas, and family visas. It also takes green cards, nonimmigrant visas, citizenship and naturalization, DACA, and deportation defense.

That list covers most of the routes a person or a family meets inside the United States immigration system. The firm names LGBTQ immigration cases as part of its work, and it takes cases involving vulnerable populations. It handles immigration appeals as well, which is a different task from the first filing.

The visa categories answer different needs. Employment visas serve workers and the companies that hire them. Investor visas apply to people who put money into a business in the United States. Family visas and green cards deal with relatives and permanent residence. Each category runs on its own forms and its own timeline.

In my opinion, the spread of areas reads as deliberate. A firm that lists asylum next to employment and investor visas can help both people fleeing danger and people moving for work. The shared ground is federal immigration law, and the firm keeps its attention there.

How immigration matters tend to move

Each of these case types follows its own track through the federal system. An asylum claim usually starts with an application to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, and it can move to an immigration court if the first stage does not grant it. Deportation defense plays out in immigration court, where a judge weighs whether a person can stay. Naturalization runs through an application, a background check, an interview, and a civics test.

Green cards and DACA follow paperwork-heavy paths. A green card can follow from a family tie, a job offer, or humanitarian grounds such as asylum. DACA covers certain people who came to the country as children, and it needs renewal on a set schedule. Work like this rewards attention to filing windows and to the evidence each request demands.

Appeals sit above all of that. When an immigration judge rules against someone, the next step can be the Board of Immigration Appeals, and in some matters a federal circuit court. These stages recur across immigration practice, and they show why appellate work has a place in a firm like this one.

How the team is built

Six attorneys and support staff make up the firm. Ginger Jacobs holds the titles of CEO and Managing Partner. David Schlesinger and Kathleen Spero are partners. Nadia F. Gonzalez is a Senior Associate Attorney, and Sydney Johnson and Mayra Cerezal are Associate Attorneys.

Partners sit at the top and associates below, a common shape for a firm this size. A named senior associate in the middle gives newer lawyers a rung to climb toward. The titles are public, so a prospective client can see who would handle the early stages of a case and who would carry the harder questions.

Where the partners trained

Ginger Jacobs earned her J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1998, after a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from Duke University in 1995. She worked as a litigator in New York City at Cahill Gordon & Reindel and at Covington & Burling before she started the firm. In 2001 she received a pro bono recognition award from Covington & Burling for representing a detained asylum seeker. As CEO and Managing Partner, she leads the firm she co-founded.

David Schlesinger earned his J.D. cum laude from the New York University School of Law in 1996 and a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from Duke University in 1993. He clerked for the Honorable Roderick R. McKelvie, a United States District Judge for the District of Delaware. He practiced commercial litigation and white-collar criminal defense in New York City, and he joined Jacobs & Schlesinger in 2005, where he added appellate litigation to the firm's work.

Kathleen Spero graduated from San Diego State University magna cum laude in 1999, with a dual major in Political Science and International Security and Conflict Resolution. She earned a Master of Pacific and International Affairs, cum laude, from the University of California, San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy in 2001. She then joined the International Rescue Committee.

The partner group mixes two litigation backgrounds with one background in international affairs. Jacobs and Schlesinger both came through New York litigation firms and federal courtrooms. Spero came through graduate study in international policy. That blend fits the firm's mix of courtroom defense and policy-heavy asylum and visa work.

What the record shows

Jacobs & Schlesinger has run since 2004, which puts it past the twenty-year mark in San Diego. The firm states that its attorneys hold 65 years of combined experience. It also states that it regularly takes pro bono work, which lines up with the recognition Ginger Jacobs earned early in her career. Pro bono in immigration often means asylum and detention cases, where the stakes are high.

As a reviewer, I find the firm's public record easy to check. It gives law schools and graduation years for its partners, and it names the New York firms where the two founders practiced before starting out. The listed practice areas are specific, and the firm names each attorney by title. Six attorneys carry that work today.