An immigration firm’s page about filing fees is competing with the agency that sets them. That sounds unwinnable, and on some engines it is.
On others the agency is not in the answer at all. Asked what an immigration lawyer costs for a green card, one engine quoted the Form I-130 and Form I-485 filing fees and credited law firm blogs for both figures. No government source appeared anywhere in it. Immigration GEO across Claude and Gemini turns on that possibility. A page carrying a government figure may be what a client is shown instead of the government, which raises the standard the page has to meet rather than lowering it.
The broader mechanics of getting cited by generative engines are covered in Lexicon’s guide to GEO for law firms.
An immigration page should state each government figure exactly, name the form and the agency it comes from, show the date it was checked, and leave out any rule the agency has not published yet.
Across three runs on one engine, every cited source was a law firm website and none was a government one.
Restate the Government Figure Exactly, and Date It
Put the number on the page in full, and put the date it was checked beside the number rather than in a page footer.
The reason is specific to immigration. Across all three Gemini runs, in both languages, every cited source was a law firm website and none was a government one. Those runs included the green card cost question, which quoted two filing fees, and a visa overstay question, where the engine quoted statutory provisions and dates and again credited firm websites rather than the government.
Google AI Mode, put to a green card interview question the same day, led with the agency itself in both English and Spanish. Engines have also been observed answering the same immigration question differently depending on the language it is asked in, which is examined in a competitive analysis of English and Spanish immigration answers.
So which source a client is shown for a government figure depends on where they ask. A firm cannot control that and does not need to. What it can control is whether the figure on its page is right, and whether a reader can tell how current it is. An undated fee is a number nobody can trust, including the reader who most needs it.
Name the Form and the Agency Behind Every Number
Write the form number and the agency into the sentence carrying the figure, rather than leaving the number floating in a paragraph.
A fee attached to a named form is checkable in one step. A reader can take Form I-485 to the agency’s own fee page and confirm it, and so can anyone reviewing the page a year later. A fee described only as the adjustment of status filing fee sends that reader searching, and a page nobody can check easily is a page that ages badly without anyone noticing.
Naming the source also settles what the figure is. Immigration costs split into government fees, attorney fees and third-party costs, and a number with no form attached to it could be any of the three. A client trying to work out what a case will cost is trying to separate exactly those, which is the job the page should be doing for them.
Do Not Publish a Rule You Have Not Confirmed at the Agency
Check every procedural rule against the agency that issues it before the page goes live, and leave out anything that cannot be confirmed there.
One engine reported an immigration procedure change, then told the reader plainly that the claim traced to law firm blogs and should be confirmed at the agency. That is an engine flagging the legal marketing industry to a prospective client, in the middle of an answer that client is relying on.
Immigration procedure moves quickly, and firms publish quickly because the traffic goes to whoever is first. A rule that circulates through firm blogs before reaching an official page lands on twenty websites inside a week, and some of those rules turn out to be wrong, or narrower than reported, or true only for one filing category.
The cost of being early is not a correction nobody reads. It is that a reader in a difficult situation acts on it. Someone deciding whether to leave the country, whether to file now or wait, or whether they need counsel at an interview is making a decision that is expensive to reverse and sometimes impossible.
So the rule is simple to state and unpopular to follow. If the agency has not published it, the firm does not publish it either. Write the piece, hold it, and ship it the day the official page appears. A page that is second and right outlives a page that is first and wrong, and in this practice area the difference is not measured in traffic.
Keep the Page Right After It Publishes
Set a review trigger tied to the agency rather than to a content calendar, because a page carrying government figures goes stale on the agency’s schedule and not on yours.
Fees change. Forms get new editions. Procedures are revised, and the revision rarely arrives on a date that suits a publishing schedule. A page reviewed every six months can carry a wrong number for five of them, and the version of that page a client is shown as the source is the version that was live when they asked.
The same applies twice over to a Spanish page. Answers given in Spanish and English to the same question drew on noticeably different sets of firms, so a Spanish page is a separate asset rather than a copy, and it needs to be written rather than run through a translation layer. Firms appearing in Spanish answers tend to run genuine Spanish websites, a pattern set out in a structural read of thirteen immigration firm sites.
A Spanish page also carries the same figures, which means it needs the same review. A firm that updates only the English version has created two pages that disagree.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should an immigration firm publish USCIS filing fees on its own pages?
An immigration firm should publish USCIS filing fees, with the form named, the amount stated exactly and the date it was checked shown beside it. Across three runs on one engine, every cited source was a law firm website and none was the agency that publishes the fees.
How should an immigration firm handle a policy change it cannot confirm?
An immigration firm should leave an unconfirmed policy change off the page until the agency publishes it. One engine reported a procedure change and warned the reader that the claim came from law firm blogs, which is the outcome a firm invites when it publishes ahead of the agency.
How often should an immigration firm review the figures on its pages?
An immigration firm should review a page when the agency changes something, rather than on a fixed content calendar. Fees and forms move on the agency’s schedule, and the version of a page that is live when a client asks is the version they are shown as the source.
Immigration GEO Across Claude and Gemini Starts With the Numbers on Your Page
Open your firm’s green card cost page and look for a date beside the filing fee. If there is no date, or no fee, that is the first fix, because on at least one engine a page like yours is what a client is shown instead of the agency.
The harder half is judgement: which government figures are worth restating, which rules are safe to publish, and which belong to an agency you will not outrank. Lexicon checks every figure against the body that publishes it before it goes into a draft.
Call 877-486-8123 or contact us online and read us the page where your firm states a government figure, or look at what Lexicon writes for immigration firms.
David Arato, JD is the founder of Lexicon Legal Content, an attorney-owned legal content marketing agency serving law firms since 2012. Lexicon writes attorney-reviewed content for law firms across criminal defense, personal injury, immigration, employment and family law. David is a frequent contributor to Attorney at Law Magazine and Attorney at Work and a recurring guest on legal marketing podcasts.
