Immigration was a hallmark of President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. And five months before the 2020 presidential election, his administration has again brought it front and center after temporarily suspending H-1B and other work visas.

Echoing the broader tech market, some U.S.-based legal tech companies say these suspensions will impact their hiring by making it harder for them to find people with the right skill sets. 

"The same talent Google needs is the same talent we need, there's no difference," said iManage CEO Neil Araujo. "Our volume is probably smaller, but it's the same skill sets that we are competing for."

Araujo added, "The one difference for legal tech is legal tech is more competitive globally. There are tech companies we compete with in Europe, Australia and Canada, and ultimately our future growth and our ability to grow jobs depends on our ability to be competitive. And having the right workforce certainly impacts legal tech like any other tech company."

While Trump's executive order temporarily suspends the issuing of H-1B, H-2B, H-4, J and L visas until at least the end of this year, the New York Times reported the temporary suspensions won't be felt immediately because U.S. consulates aren't conducting interviews for most visas due to COVID-19.

Still, Jessica Demuth, legal solutions vice president at Exigent Group, which drafts visas for law firms and other legal outsourcing and tech services, argued that pausing visas won't stop the demand for certain skill sets. "What it will do in the long term is reduce production in the U.S. because they won't be able to find the skills," she said. 

What's more, Demuth noted that while the U.S. is reeling from record unemployment, that doesn't mean the recently unemployed will have the skills tech companies need. 

The suspension, especially if extended, may also push companies with offices outside the U.S. to consider hiring employees in less restrictive jurisdictions.

"It will get us to rethink some of our strategy," Araujo said. "We have operations in Belfast [and] Sydney, and we may choose to grow one of those centers and not the Chicago center [so] we can tap into a broader job pool that way."

But as COVID-19 keeps most out of the office, including legal tech companies, remote working could alleviate some of the impact from the visa suspensions, said Joyce Thorne, Elevate Services' human resources and learning and development vice president.

If a company organizes its staff to have the needed skills and abilities available on various shifts and time zones, the company shouldn't be severely impacted by visa suspensions, Thorne said.

"Trying to cover the U.S. from Europe when you have to get into an office at noon and are done at 9 o'clock at night, that's difficult [for employees]," she said. "We've found people to be more flexible when working remotely."

Still, Araujo said the visa orders, including the temporary suspension of L-1 visas, which allows for transfers within companies and organizations to send employees to the U.S. to establish a company office, throws companies an unnecessary curveball.

L-1 visas give "us the ability to cross-pollinate the culture and develop deeper relationships with an employee as well as execute faster when a team may be there and a contributor is in another office," Araujo added.

Still, while hiring non-U.S. citizens in the U.S. is now more difficult, some Canada-based legal tech companies see it as their potential gain.

"This has a positive impact on us, because we're primarily doing our hiring in Canada," said Noah Waisberg, CEO of Toronto-based contract review platform Kira Inc. "If anything, this restriction should encourage more talent, in particular, with people with hard-to-find skills to consider moving to Canada to work with us."