Partner Visa: Migration Agent or Lawyer, and What Differs

Do you need a migration agent or a lawyer for a Partner visa?

Both a registered migration agent and an immigration lawyer can lawfully prepare and lodge an Australian Partner visa application. The difference is what happens when your case has a legal problem in it.

That is the plain answer, and it is not the answer most pages give you. Australian law treats registered migration agents and Australian lawyers as two separate categories of person who are permitted to help you with a visa. It does not treat one as a junior version of the other. Each is qualified. Each is regulated. Each can sit with you, work out whether you are a spouse or a de facto partner, build your evidence, write your relationship history, and lodge the application.

So for a great many couples the choice makes very little practical difference to the paperwork. If you are married, living together, lodging onshore on a valid visa, with no refusal history, no sponsorship problem and no complication in either person's immigration record, the work ahead of you is careful and methodical rather than legal. It is document gathering, relationship evidence, Form 888 statements, and a clear written account of how the relationship actually works.

The choice starts to matter the moment something in your history changes the legal question the decision maker has to answer. A period without a visa. An earlier refusal. A previous partner you sponsored. A relationship that has ended badly. At that point you are no longer only filling in an application. You are arguing a legal position, and the two categories are not equipped in the same way to argue it. If you want the full picture of the visas involved before you decide, our partner visa lawyers page sets out the Subclass 820, Subclass 309 and Subclass 300 pathways side by side.

One more thing to get out of the way first. You are not required to use anyone at all. Nothing in the Migration Act 1958 obliges you to appoint a representative for a Partner visa. Plenty of people lodge their own applications and are granted. The question is not whether you are allowed to do it yourself. It is whether your particular case has something in it that will cost you more to get wrong than it costs to get advice.

My Migration Lawyers, is an Australian incorporated legal practice, and Partner visa matters are one of its main areas of work. It is worth saying plainly what that means for this article. We will tell you when a case does not need a lawyer, because a Partner visa that is straightforward stays straightforward whoever lodges it. What follows is written so you can work out which kind of case you have, and then choose on that basis.

What a registered migration agent is allowed to do

A registered migration agent is a person registered with the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority, known as the OMARA, to give immigration assistance. If they are operating in Australia, that registration is compulsory. Every registered agent holds a seven digit Migration Agent Registration Number, or MARN.

The Migration Act 1958 defines "immigration assistance" in section 276. You give immigration assistance if you use, or claim to use, your knowledge or experience in migration procedure to help someone prepare a visa application, prepare a sponsorship or nomination, prepare a request for ministerial intervention, or represent them in proceedings before a court or a review authority. Section 276 also makes clear what is not immigration assistance. Doing clerical work alone is not. Translating or interpreting alone is not. Simply telling someone that they need to apply for a visa is not.

Section 280 then restricts who may give that assistance. A person who is not a registered migration agent must not give immigration assistance, unless they fall inside one of the exceptions in that section. Section 281 goes further and restricts who may charge for it. A person who is not a registered migration agent must not ask for or receive any fee or other reward for giving immigration assistance, and the penalty is up to 10 years imprisonment. These are serious criminal provisions, and they exist because unregulated visa advice has caused real harm to real families.

For a Partner visa, a registered migration agent can do essentially all of the work. They can advise you which Partner visa suits your situation, tell you what documents you need, prepare and lodge the application, deal with the Department on your behalf as your authorised recipient, respond to a request for more information, and represent you at the Administrative Review Tribunal if the visa is refused.

Registered agents are also bound by a statutory Code of Conduct, currently set out in the Migration (Migration Agents Code of Conduct) Regulations 2021. The Code is not a voluntary industry guideline. It is law. It requires an agent to act professionally and ethically, to put the fee arrangement in a written service agreement before taking any money, to issue invoices and receipts, to keep a client file, to return your documents when you ask for them, to tell you about any conflict of interest, to keep your information confidential, and to hold professional indemnity insurance. A good registered migration agent is a genuinely useful professional, and many Partner visas are prepared by one without any difficulty at all.

What an immigration lawyer is allowed to do

An immigration lawyer is an Australian legal practitioner who holds a current practising certificate granted under the law of an Australian state or territory, and who practises in migration law. A lawyer does not need a MARN.

This is the point most people get wrong, and it is worth stating plainly. Section 280(3) of the Migration Act 1958 says that the section does not prohibit an Australian legal practitioner from giving immigration assistance in connection with legal practice. Section 281(3) makes the same exception for charging fees. A lawyer with a practising certificate is therefore entitled to advise on your Partner visa, lodge it, and be paid for doing so, without being registered as a migration agent.

The Department's own paperwork confirms it. Form 956 is titled "Appointment of a registered migration agent, legal practitioner or exempt person". It lists registered migration agents and legal practitioners as two separate categories, and it gives each one its own field: a Migration Agent Registration Number for an agent, and a Legal Practitioner Number for a lawyer. If someone tells you a lawyer without a MARN is unregistered, they are wrong, and Form 956 is the document that shows it.

A lawyer can do everything a registered migration agent can do on a Partner visa. A lawyer can also do three things that sit outside a migration agent's scope, and those three things are where the real difference lies. A lawyer can give you legal advice that is protected by legal professional privilege. A lawyer can act for you in a court. And a lawyer is answerable to the legal profession regulator in their state or territory, which sits behind them with a complaints jurisdiction, a compulsory insurance scheme and, in most jurisdictions, a fidelity fund.

None of that makes a lawyer the right choice for every Partner visa. It makes a lawyer the right choice for a Partner visa with a legal problem in it. The next section sets out exactly what those problems look like, so you can tell which one you have.

My Migration Lawyers sits in this second category. It is an Australian incorporated legal practice, and its Australian immigration-law practice is led by Weiwei Zhang, Principal Lawyer and Director. We state that here for the same reason we will tell you to check anyone else later in this article. You should be able to name which of the two categories your adviser is in, and then confirm it on a public register.

Where the difference actually matters in a Partner visa

The difference between an agent and a lawyer matters when your Partner visa turns on a legal argument rather than on evidence. Six situations do that more often than any others.

The first is Schedule 3. If you apply for a Subclass 820 in Australia and you do not hold a substantive visa, Schedule 3 to the Migration Regulations 1994 applies to you, and criteria 3001, 3003 and 3004 have to be met or waived. A waiver is not a form you tick. It is a written argument that compelling reasons affecting the circumstances of the case justify waiving the criteria, and it is the single most commonly lost point in onshore Partner visa work. Our Schedule 3 waiver page explains what the three criteria actually require.

The second is a section 48 bar. If you have had a visa refused or cancelled while you were in Australia, section 48 of the Migration Act 1958 stops you applying onshore for most further visas. Under section 48 you may only apply for a visa of a class prescribed by the Migration Regulations 1994 for that purpose. A Partner visa is one of the classes that can still be applied for, but whether you are inside or outside the bar, and on what date, is statutory interpretation rather than paperwork.

The third is a sponsorship limitation. Regulation 1.20J of the Migration Regulations 1994 limits how many partners a person may sponsor and how far apart in time. If your sponsor has sponsored before, or was themselves granted a Partner visa, the application can be caught before anyone even looks at your relationship. Our partner visa sponsorship limitations page sets out when a waiver is available.

The fourth is Public Interest Criterion 4020. If the Department forms the view that a bogus document or false or misleading information was given in support of the application, PIC 4020 can produce a refusal and an exclusion period. Responding to a PIC 4020 allegation is an exercise in legal submissions and evidence, often under a short deadline.

The fifth is the family violence provisions. If your relationship has ended and family violence was part of it, Division 1.5 of the Migration Regulations 1994 may still allow the permanent visa to be granted. This is legally technical and personally difficult at the same time, and it is set out on our family violence provisions page.

The sixth is a refusal. Once a Partner visa is refused, the work changes character entirely. It becomes review work with hard deadlines, and the question stops being "what evidence do we have" and starts being "what did the decision maker get wrong".

If none of those six applies to you, a competent registered migration agent and a competent lawyer are likely to prepare a very similar application. If one of them does apply, you are buying legal analysis, and you should buy it from someone whose job is legal analysis.

Those six are the matters My Migration Lawyers acts in, which is why each of them has its own page on this site rather than a paragraph buried in a general guide. They are the points where a Partner visa stops being an evidence exercise and becomes an argument, and an argument has to be written by someone who will still be there to run it if the Department does not accept it.

What happens if the Partner visa is refused

A refusal splits into two stages, and a registered migration agent can act for you at the first stage but not the second. Understanding that split before you choose is more useful than any comparison of hourly rates.

The first stage is merits review at the Administrative Review Tribunal. The Tribunal looks at the decision again, on the facts as they stand on the day, and can substitute a different decision. Section 66 of the Administrative Review Tribunal Act 2024 allows a party to be represented by another person. It does not require that person to be a lawyer. A registered migration agent can therefore run your Tribunal review, lodge the application, file the submissions and appear with you at the hearing. Our partner visa refusal page explains how the Tribunal stage works and how tight the deadline is.

The second stage is judicial review, and that is court work. If the Tribunal affirms the refusal, the next step is an application to the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Division 2), which does not re-decide the facts. It asks whether the Tribunal made a jurisdictional error. Section 477 of the Migration Act 1958 requires the application to be filed within 35 days of the date of the migration decision. The Court may extend that time, but you have to ask, and you have to explain why. Running a case in a federal court is legal practice. It is done by lawyers. Our judicial review page sets out what a jurisdictional error is and what the Court can and cannot do.

The practical consequence is simple. If your matter has any realistic chance of ending up in court, there is value in having a lawyer involved before it gets there, because the arguments that survive in court are usually the ones that were put properly to the Tribunal first. A point not raised below is much harder to run above.

This is the part of the decision people underestimate, and it is the reason My Migration Lawyers runs all three stages in the one place. The application, the Administrative Review Tribunal review and the judicial review are handled by the same firm, so a matter that becomes difficult does not have to be handed to a new adviser at the point where the deadline is shortest and the file is largest.

The money matters too, and not in the way people expect. The Partner visa application charge is set by Schedule 1 to the Migration Regulations 1994. It is the same charge whether an agent lodges your application, a lawyer lodges it, or you lodge it yourself, and it runs to several thousand dollars for a combined Subclass 820 and 801 application. The Department does not refund it because the application was refused. So the cost of a mistake is not only the professional fee you paid. It is the application charge as well, and you cannot get that part back.

Legal professional privilege, and why it matters here

Legal professional privilege protects confidential communications between you and your lawyer that are made for the dominant purpose of giving or obtaining legal advice. It attaches to the lawyer relationship. It does not attach to advice from a person who is not a lawyer.

In an ordinary Partner visa this will never come up. In a difficult one it can matter a great deal. Partner visa matters sometimes involve facts a client is frightened to write down. A period of unlawful status. A marriage that has broken down. An earlier application that was not accurate. A relationship history that is genuine but messy. You have to be able to tell your adviser the whole of it, because an adviser who only hears the comfortable half will build you an application that falls over the first time the Department asks a hard question.

Privilege is what allows that conversation to happen without the conversation itself becoming evidence. It is a substantive legal right, not a courtesy, and it belongs to you rather than to the lawyer. If the same disclosure is made to an adviser who is not a lawyer, the protection is not there in the same way.

This is not a reason to distrust a registered migration agent. Agents are bound by a statutory duty of confidentiality under the Code of Conduct, and most handle sensitive information carefully every day. Confidentiality and privilege are simply different things. Confidentiality governs what your adviser may choose to disclose. Privilege governs what your adviser can be compelled to disclose. If your Partner visa involves facts that could be used against you, that distinction is worth understanding before you start talking.

Who regulates each one, and where a complaint goes

A registered migration agent is regulated by the OMARA. A lawyer is regulated by the legal profession regulator in their own state or territory. The two complaint routes are entirely separate, and sending a complaint to the wrong one costs you time you may not have.

If your registered migration agent has not done what they agreed to do, the complaint goes to the OMARA. The OMARA investigates and can discipline a registered agent, including by cautioning them, suspending their registration or cancelling it. The Code of Conduct is the standard it measures them against, which is why the Code's requirements about written service agreements, invoices, receipts and client files are so useful to a client. They create the paper trail a complaint needs.

If your lawyer has not done what they agreed to do, the complaint goes to the legal services commissioner or law society in the state or territory where that lawyer holds their practising certificate. That system also covers costs disputes, which is a practical point worth knowing. In most Australian jurisdictions a client can have a legal bill independently assessed, and a lawyer has to give you written disclosure about costs before the work starts.

Neither regulator is better than the other in the abstract. They are different, and which one covers your adviser depends on which category your adviser is in. That is one more reason to be certain, before you pay anything, which category you have actually engaged.

For completeness, My Migration Lawyers is a law firm, so it sits in the second of those two systems. Its lawyers hold Australian practising certificates and answer to the legal profession regulator in their state. That is a verifiable fact rather than a marketing line, and the next section shows you how to check it in about five minutes.

How to check who you are actually hiring

Ask for a number, then check it on a public register. Every legitimate adviser in Australia has one, and the whole check takes about five minutes.

If the person is a registered migration agent, ask for their Migration Agent Registration Number. It is seven digits. You can search the register of registered migration agents on the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority website and confirm that the number, the name and the business match what you have been told, and that the registration is current.

If the person is a lawyer, ask for their name and the state or territory where they hold their practising certificate. Every Australian state and territory legal regulator publishes a searchable register of practising lawyers. Search it and confirm the certificate is current. A lawyer with no MARN is not a problem. A lawyer who cannot be found on any legal profession register is.

Then look at Form 956. When an adviser is appointed to act for you, the Department is told using Form 956, "Appointment of a registered migration agent, legal practitioner or exempt person". On that form your adviser has to state which category they are in and give the matching number. Ask to see the completed Form 956 for your own matter before it is lodged. You are entitled to know what is being filed in your name, and the form itself tells you whether you have engaged an agent, a lawyer or someone else. A separate Form 956 is required for each matter.

There is a third category on that form, and it is worth knowing about. An "exempt person" may give immigration assistance without being a registered agent or a lawyer. The Department's list includes a close family member, being a spouse, child, adopted child, parent, brother or sister of the applicant, and it also includes the sponsor or nominator. So your sponsoring partner is allowed to help you prepare the application. The condition is absolute: an exempt person must not charge a fee for that assistance. Charging a fee without being registered is the criminal offence under section 281, carrying up to 10 years imprisonment. If someone is charging you and is neither a registered migration agent nor a lawyer, that is the moment to stop and check.

Do the same to us. If you are considering My Migration Lawyers, ask for the practising certificate details behind the advice you are given, and check them on the register of your state or territory before you pay anything. We would rather you asked. Any firm that is uncomfortable with that question has already answered it.

How to choose for your own Partner visa

Choose on the shape of your case, not on the job title. Three questions will tell you which way to go.

First, is there anything in either person's immigration history that a decision maker could use against the application? A period without a visa, a refusal, a cancellation, an earlier application that was not accurate, or a previous sponsorship. If the answer is yes, you are buying legal analysis and you should get it from a lawyer.

Second, is the relationship itself straightforward to evidence? If you are married or clearly de facto, living together, with joint finances and people who can write Form 888 statements, the work is evidence work and a competent registered migration agent can do it well. If the relationship is real but hard to document, because you have lived apart, or your finances are separate for cultural reasons, or your family does not know, then the application needs an argument built around the four matters the decision maker must consider. Those are set out in subregulation 1.09A(3) of the Migration Regulations 1994 if you are de facto partners, and subregulation 1.15A(3) if you are married: the financial aspects of the relationship, the nature of the household, the social aspects of the relationship, and the nature of your commitment to each other. Building that argument is closer to legal work, and it is the sort of thing our Subclass 820 partner visa page goes through in detail.

Third, what happens if this is refused? If a refusal would leave you unlawful, separate you from children, or trigger a bar on applying again, the downside is severe and it is worth having the person who will handle the appeal involved from the start.

If all three answers are comfortable, you do not need to spend more than you have to. A registered migration agent is a proper professional and, for a straightforward Partner visa, is a perfectly sound choice. Any adviser who tells you otherwise is selling, not advising.

My Migration Lawyers is a law firm, so every matter here is handled by a lawyer. That is a statement about scope, not a promise about outcomes, and nobody can promise you an outcome on a Partner visa. What it means in practice is that the Schedule 3 arguments, the section 48 questions, the Tribunal reviews and the court work all sit in the same place as the application itself. You can read how the firm works on our about page.

Three things are worth knowing before you engage anybody, us included. You get a written scope and costs agreement before ongoing legal work begins, so the work and the price are agreed in writing and not left to be argued about later. Nothing is lodged with the Department in your name until you have seen it. And if a cheaper or simpler pathway suits you better, or the application should not be lodged yet, we will say so, even where saying so means less work for us.

If you are not sure which category your case falls into, that is exactly the question worth asking before you commit to anything. You can set out your situation on our consultation request form and we will tell you honestly what your case actually involves, including if the honest answer is that it is straightforward.