See my replies to others for my background information.
As for the lawyer information, it is really a terrible experience.
I hired a lawyer in Houston, but he did not do anything except for changing only a few words in the rec. letters.
After I sent most of my documents to him, hurricane Rita came to Houston and he dissappeared. I was afraid that he could not come back by the cut-off date. So I worked days and nights on my own using my backup documents and filed to CIS myself.