How can I confirm that an attorney is legit?

Question

There's an attorney I can use to jump through MANY hoops to get a good passport. His work he published on his website seems legit according to the translator I used. He's publishing hundreds of documents related to clients and cases won, though he's not promising anything for certain. If he was cheap, this would be a case of too good to be true.

But the things he's talking about related to the law are weird (this isn't exactly a developed country so maybe its not weird idk). I found several people (expats like me) who knows of him. Everyone thinks there's something weird here. So none of us wanted to take the risk of working with him. But I want to give it a shot.

Here's what I'm thinking. If he's bribing officials or doing something shady, this might come back to bite me in the ass along with all his other clients maybe in 3 years or maybe 15. I think this sort of thing might stay in your record your whole life, making it impossible to get a citizenship, residency and even a visa from all countries. I don't know how this works exactly but this is a possibility, right? So is there a way to figure this out? Should I hire a private investigator to check up on this attorney? Should I hire another attorney to figure this out but what if they're friends? Is there another way?

I might be extra cautious here but I think its worth it

Edit 1. More info

This is not a citizenship by investment program

Nothing is 100% clear in this part of the world but the lawyer using some sort of loophole in the legal system. He's quoting the law (a few pages) in his website to explain what he does.

This looks weird to me and others. He might be 100% truthful or this might be a cover.

He's not promising anything but his references online (on a public forum) are saying that he's the only guy who's doing this and that he discovered the method he's using. This also looks weird to me.

Based on my research, other lawyers have higher success rates compared to him. But if you go with them you jump through hoops and in that case you can do it solo without lawyer in most cases assuming you know the language

Edit 2. More info

Here's what might happen which is my concern. 5 years later their government sorts itself out and one day they discover that this guy bribed officials. Turns out most of the fees are for briberies. So they put him in jail. They also revoke the citizenships this guy got for his clients, or maybe they don't. Then they start cases against clients because they think clients knew what this guy was doing and they were willingly cooperating. So now his clients are also criminals or whatever this is called. Now you're fucked. This is going to come up when someone does a background check on you like Interpol.

INTERPOL enables police in our 194 member countries to work together to fight international crime

So that means when you apply for a new visa, residency or citizenship, this is going to come up. They're going to see that and reject you.

Answer 1

The short answer is that there are many different ways that different countries regulate lawyers, and thus, many different ways to go about confirming the legitimacy of a lawyer.

There is also considerable variation by country and by the type of legal situation involved, regarding the effect of a good faith reliance on inaccurate advice from a lawyer.

The fact that there is so much variation in this is one of the reasons that fraud and corruption in international transactions involving people who are, or who claim to be, lawyers is fairly common. My office gets dubious communications involving people who claim to be lawyers (sometimes hijacking the names, photos, and trade dress of legitimate law firms and lawyers with subtly spoofed contact information) several times a week.

One option is to proactively seek out firms using recognized and well-established legal directories with multinational operations and ratings of each lawyer's competence and ethics, rather than responding to cold call style advertising or online commentary and essays. Historically, the leading publication in this niche was Martindale Hubbell, but there are now multiple competitors that use this business model.

Another option is to rely on word of mouth referrals and/or corroboration from people in a good position to know, such as embassy staff from your country in the country in question, or from professional employees of large multinational businesses in the country in question. Ideally, rely on more than one source for each law firm you consider retaining.