The Law Firm of Shihab & Associates

Focus and practice areas

Immigration law is the firm's one practice area. The Law Firm of Shihab & Associates lists work across the main branches of that field: employment-based and family-based immigration, green cards, and citizenship and naturalization. The site also names removal proceedings, asylum, adjustment of status, and immigration appeals among its services.

Two further groups of matters appear on the pages. The firm handles investor visas and temporary work visas for people entering the United States to build a business or take up a job. It also names immigration work tied to colleges and healthcare organizations, which brings student, faculty, and medical staffing questions into the caseload.

In my opinion, the value of a single-field practice like this one is depth of repetition. A firm that reads the same statutes and files with the same agencies week after week tends to know the current forms and the current wait times. The site frames its work around that kind of steady immigration caseload.

The clients the firm represents

Shihab & Associates lists a client base that includes individuals and large organizations. Founder Gus M. Shihab represents international investors, corporations, employers, colleges, universities, families, and individual immigrants, according to the attorneys page. That range covers the business side of immigration and the personal side.

Employers and universities usually need help moving people into roles that require a visa. Families and individuals more often need green cards, naturalization, or defense in removal proceedings. The firm names both categories, so the same office can handle a company sponsoring a worker and a person applying to stay.

Healthcare organizations get a specific mention. Hospitals and clinics that recruit foreign-trained doctors and nurses face their own visa and credential rules, and the firm lists that work directly. Physician cases often involve waivers tied to service in underserved areas, which adds a step that general immigration filings skip.

How the team is built

The firm states that its lawyers hold more than 50 years of combined experience. It names four attorneys on its roster: one founder and three who carry associate titles.

The founder

Gus M. Shihab founded the firm and has more than 30 years of experience. He has appeared in state and federal courts and in courts of appeals, and he has handled immigration court cases in different parts of the country. Immigration court sits inside the executive branch, under the Department of Justice, so a lawyer who also works in federal district and appeals courts can follow a case past the agency stage and into judicial review.

The associates

Two senior associate attorneys, Nicholas A. Kotz and George H. Martinez Jr., appear on the roster, along with associate attorney Giovanna Rizzuto. Martinez completed his legal studies at Whittier Law School and graduated with the class of 2019. His practice focuses on immigration matters, including business and consumer immigration. The site lists Kotz and Rizzuto by name and title, with the fuller biography going to Martinez.

The firm's full name appears on Martinez's page as The Law Firm of Shihab & Associates, Co., LPA. LPA is Ohio's designation for a legal professional association, the corporate form many law offices in the state use.

Offices and reach

The website lists five office locations across three states and the District of Columbia. The firm names offices in Columbus and Cleveland in Ohio, Fairfax in Virginia, Southfield in Michigan, and Washington, D.C. Columbus is the base the site treats as its main location.

That footprint matters in immigration work because some steps happen in person. Biometrics appointments, green card interviews, and naturalization interviews take place at local field offices, and immigration court hearings happen in set locations. Offices in the Midwest, the mid-Atlantic, and the capital put the firm near several of those points.

Washington, D.C. carries extra weight for one part of the practice. Appeals and federal litigation in immigration often route through agencies and courts based there. A presence in that area fits the appellate and federal court work the founder's page describes.

How these matters generally proceed

Immigration cases move through agencies more than courtrooms, and a short map of the stages helps in reading the firm's service list.

Petitions and interviews

Green card and naturalization cases usually start with a petition or application to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, followed by biometrics, a wait, and an interview. Employment-based cases often add a labor step through the Department of Labor before the visa petition. Family-based cases follow a similar arc, with a relative filing the initial petition and priority dates that set how long the wait runs. Timelines depend on the category and the applicant's home country, and much of the lawyer's job is preparing evidence and tracking each stage.

Work and investor visas

Temporary work visas usually depend on an employer filing a petition and, for many categories, an annual cap that limits how many the government grants. Investor visas ask the applicant to document the money at stake and the jobs a business will support. Both routes run largely on paperwork and deadlines, and the firm lists them beside its employment-based immigration work.

Court and appeals

Removal proceedings run on a separate track. They go before an immigration judge in the Executive Office for Immigration Review, where a person can raise defenses such as asylum, cancellation of removal, or adjustment of status. Asylum claims turn on showing a fear of persecution tied to specific grounds, and they carry filing deadlines that reward early action. The firm lists asylum, removal defense, and adjustment of status, the pieces that meet at this stage.

Appeals sit above both tracks. A denial from the agency or the immigration judge can move to the Board of Immigration Appeals and, in some matters, to a federal court of appeals. Those later stages turn on the written record built earlier, so the quality of the first filing shapes the odds at review. The founder's courtroom record and the firm's listed appeals service match that path.

What the record shows

As a reviewer, I read the firm's pages as the profile of an office built around one area of law, with a long-serving founder and a small associate team. The site names four attorneys, states experience figures for the firm and its founder, and lists offices in three states and Washington, D.C. Those claims tie to named people and named places, which is the kind of detail a reader can check.

Some standard detail stays off the public pages. The site gives a graduation year and law school for one associate and names for the others, and it does not print a founding year for the firm. A reader who wants admission dates or fuller biographies would need to contact the office. The practice-area list and the attorney roster carry most of what the site offers, and both center on immigration, the single field the firm names across every office.