For many immigration practices, the hardest cases share a familiar pattern. A client with strong equities in the United States, a supportive employer or family, and a viable theory of relief is suddenly blocked by an old criminal conviction. Traditional options are exhausted. Waivers are unavailable or risky. The file stalls. Some never even start.  They begin with an immigration intake conversation and end with an “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do.”  Prospective clients with criminal convictions lay dormant and rejected in Immigration Firm’s Databases, collecting dust.  Or at least they did before McClure breathed life into the population.

Over the past several years, attorney Stephanie McClure has turned that impasse into a distinct practice model that sits alongside and serves front‑end immigration work performed by immigration lawyers around the country. As founder of SMC Law Group (f/k/a the Law Office of Stephanie McClure) and a Supreme Court of New Jersey certified Criminal Trial Specialist, she concentrates on a particular type of post‑conviction relief that clears the way for colleagues to revive stalled immigration strategies. “When an immigration lawyer calls me, they are not looking for a second opinion on a waiver or admissibility,” she says, explaining that they are looking for ways to address the criminal conviction and assess whether post-conviction relief may affect the client’s immigration options.

A firm focus anchored in crimmigration

McClure’s firm spans two principal areas. Criminal defense and immigration. But not the type of immigration where she files green card applications and handles applications for benefits.  The distinctive lane sits where the two overlap. Alongside a nationwide network, she litigates motions to vacate, petitions for coram nobis, post‑conviction vacatur applications, and federal habeas corpus matters around the United States. The goal is not general sentence reduction, but targeted outcomes that restore eligibility for immigration benefits or halt removal.

The demand for that work reflects broader trends. Data compiled in recent years by organizations such as the American Immigration Council shows that criminal convictions, including low‑level offenses, play an outsized role in detention and deportation decisions. For practices that handle high volumes of complex immigration matters, access to post‑conviction expertise has become a differentiator.  Access to multi-jurisdiction post -conviction advice is a luxury that immigration lawyers note and keep in their cell phones.

“Immigration counsel should not and honestly cannot become criminal law and procedure experts overnight,” McClure says. She believes that clients are best served when they can bring in someone who lives in that world every day, and when a criminal expert can team up with their immigration attorney to help provide clients with informed guidance and coordinated representation. “That’s what I would want if the shoe was on the other foot,” she says.

From prosecutor to referral destination

The credibility behind that proposition comes from McClure’s first decade in law as a prosecutor. In a busy New Jersey prosecutor’s Office, she supervised a trial team, handled elite Special Victims Unit cases, homicides, domestic violence matters, and more drug cases than she’s even willing to try estimating. The Supreme Court of New Jersey’s certification process for criminal trial attorneys, which she successfully completed, requires extensive trial experience, judicial and peer review, and written and oral examinations.

Fast forward another decade (2026, marking her 20th year as an attorney), and that background now informs her conversations with referring lawyers and allows substantive legal arguments to flow off her tongue like a native language. McClure and her team evaluate whether a conviction is amenable to challenge, identify constitutional or procedural defects, and advise candidly when a matter is unlikely to succeed. In some cases, she recommends a focus on alternative strategies. In others, she moves quickly to file emergency applications.

Systems and safeguards for high‑stakes work

The operational demands of this model are significant, and McClure built her firm with foresight that tracks, including the ability to handle cases across multiple jurisdictions, even when jurisdictions change mid-case and involve convictions entered in one state, detention in another, and immigration proceedings in a third. Consistent communication with referring immigration attorneys is central to her operating procedure to ensure her strategy matches the clients’ end-game immigration goals. When the referral is made early enough, the firm provides assessments of strategy and post‑conviction options, timelines, and even potential collateral consequences if criminal cases are live and ongoing, so that immigration counsel can adjust strategy in parallel.

“Lawyers often come to me with clients they have represented for years,” McClure says. “They need to know, in plain terms, what is realistically possible on the criminal side so they can manage expectations and plan the next moves, now more than ever, because there is no longer room for error.”

McClure’s case studies illustrate how coordination between post-conviction counsel and immigration counsel may provide clients with additional options when navigating matters involving both criminal and immigration law.

Service beyond client representation

McClure’s emphasis on integrity and excellence has been recognized formally. Her work has included service to clients through pro bono efforts and participation in professional legal organizations.

Her pro bono portfolio extends beyond crimmigration and reflects her commitment to service. McClure has appeared as a speaker for continuing legal education programs on ethics and conflicts of interest. For law firms assessing potential co‑counsel and referral relationships, those roles function as additional due diligence markers.

Opportunity for immigration practices

For immigration and full‑service firms, integrating post‑conviction expertise into case strategy can change how risk is evaluated at intake and beyond. Prospective clients once turned away due to old convictions may now warrant a second review in light of post‑conviction options. Matters already in removal or detention posture can be triaged for possible criminal relief, allowing firms to prioritize where to invest limited resources. “Reviewing prospective cases that were turned down for potential post-conviction opportunity may be an untapped resource for case generation, right under their noses,” says McClure, speaking of immigration law firms across the country.

McClure advises colleagues to think about post‑conviction work as both another tool to be used early as well as a last‑minute rescue attempt when needed. “It’s wise to bring us in early,” she says. “If we know about a problematic conviction before someone applies for a benefit or travels, or is otherwise placed in removal, we can work on fixing it before it triggers a full-blown crisis.”

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