Do you need an immigration lawyer or a registered migration agent in Brisbane?

Most visa matters don’t need a lawyer. If you’re preparing an application, responding to a request from the Department, or appealing a refusal at the Administrative Review Tribunal, a registered migration agent can do all of that.

You need a lawyer when your matter goes to court. Judicial review in the Federal Circuit and Family Court, an appeal to the Federal Court, or criminal charges affecting your visa. A registered migration agent can’t appear for you in any of those.

That’s the short answer. The rest of this page explains where the line actually falls, because “immigration lawyer” and “migration agent” get used interchangeably in conversation and they’re not the same thing.

An immigration lawyer is an admitted Australian legal practitioner who holds a current practising certificate and works in migration law.

Since 22 March 2021, an Australian legal practitioner can provide immigration assistance without holding separate registration as a migration agent. Before that date, lawyers doing migration work generally had to be registered agents as well. The change means the two professions are now genuinely distinct rather than overlapping.

A lawyer can do everything a registered migration agent can do, and can also act for you in court.

In Queensland, you can check whether someone is an admitted practitioner through the Queensland Law Society. Anyone using the title “lawyer”, “solicitor” or “legal practitioner” is representing that they’re entitled to practise law, and that representation is regulated.

A registered migration agent is registered with the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority and provides immigration assistance under the Migration Act 1958.

Registration requires the Graduate Diploma in Australian Migration Law and Practice, a pass in the Capstone assessment, professional indemnity insurance, and annual continuing professional development. Agents are bound by the Migration Agents Code of Conduct and their registration sits on a public register at mara.gov.au.

An agent can advise you on which visa fits, prepare and lodge the application, correspond with the Department on your behalf, respond to natural justice letters, prepare waiver submissions, and represent you at the Administrative Review Tribunal.

An agent cannot appear in court.

Bullseye Consultant is a registered migration agency. We’re not a law firm. Our registered migration agents are Amanpreet Bhangoo (MARN 1573884), Neha Kaushal (MARN 2518964), Sumit Goyal (MARN 2519003) and Dimpee Bhardwaj (MARN 2518821).

Look at how much of that table is identical. For the overwhelming majority of visa work, the choice between an agent and a lawyer isn’t a choice about capability.

This is the distinction most people get wrong, so it’s worth being precise.

The Administrative Review Tribunal reviews the merits of a decision. It can look at your case afresh, consider new evidence, and substitute a different decision. It replaced the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on 14 October 2024. A registered migration agent can represent you there. Three of the matters on our case studies page were ART reviews.

Judicial review asks a different question. A court doesn’t reconsider whether you should get the visa. It asks whether the decision was made lawfully, whether there was a jurisdictional error, a denial of procedural fairness, or a misapplication of the law. That’s a legal argument in a courtroom, and it requires an admitted legal practitioner.

The practical consequence is about sequence. Most matters that end up in court started somewhere else. A refusal goes to the Tribunal first. Only if the Tribunal affirms the refusal does judicial review become relevant, and there’s a strict deadline for that step.

So the question usually isn’t “agent or lawyer” at the start. It’s “who handles this stage, and what happens if it goes further”.

Where a matter needs court representation rather than immigration assistance, we work with admitted Australian legal practitioners through our partnership with Visas Migration Agents & Lawyers.

You’re told upfront which parts of your matter are handled by a registered migration agent and which need a lawyer. If your file reaches a point where judicial review becomes the sensible next step, you’re not starting again with a stranger who has to read three years of history from scratch.

Most Brisbane migration agencies can’t offer that pathway. It matters most in the cases where you’d least want to be scrambling.

Lawyers are generally more expensive than registered migration agents, though the range on both sides is wide and comparing headline rates is close to meaningless.

What’s worth comparing is the scope of the work. A fixed fee for preparing a partner visa application and an hourly rate for a court matter aren’t the same product.

Our consultation fees are published on our fees page, starting at $80 for a 30 minute telephone appointment. Professional fees for the work itself are quoted in a written costs agreement before anything starts, which the Code of Conduct requires.

Whoever you engage, ask for the fee in writing, ask what’s included, and ask what happens if the application is refused.

For a registered migration agent: search the Register of Migration Agents at mara.gov.au. Check the registration is current, and check the name on the register matches the person actually handling your file. Some businesses advertise a registered agent while unregistered staff do the work.

For a lawyer: check with the Queensland Law Society, or the equivalent regulator in the state where they practise. Confirm they hold a current practising certificate.

For anyone calling themselves an “immigration consultant”: that title means nothing in Australia. It isn’t regulated and it doesn’t indicate qualification, registration or insurance. In Australia, only registered migration agents and admitted legal practitioners can lawfully give immigration assistance for a fee.

If someone can’t produce either a MARN or a practising certificate, stop there.

Worth saying, because most pages on this topic won’t.

If you’re applying for a visitor or student visa, you’ve never been refused anything, you have no health or character issues and your documents are in order, you can likely lodge it yourself through ImmiAccount. The system is built for that.

Where professional help earns its cost is when something complicates the picture. A previous refusal. A cancellation. A gap with no substantive visa. A health condition that might trigger the significant cost threshold. A criminal record. A genuine relationship that’s hard to evidence.

In those situations, how the case is put frequently matters more than the underlying facts.

We’re at Buranda House, 2/154 Ipswich Road, Woolloongabba, about ten minutes from the Brisbane CBD. Appointments are available in person, by Zoom, or by telephone, and we work with clients across Queensland and Australia-wide.

Call (07) 3519 7009 or book a consultation. There is more on what a registered agent does day to day on our immigration agent Brisbane page, and a fuller comparison at migration lawyer versus migration agent.

If it turns out your matter needs a lawyer, we’ll tell you that in the consultation rather than after you’ve paid for something else.