During the last decade, legal scholars regularly documented the disparities in the outcomes of asylum claims, and concluded that who examines refugee status matters more than the merits of the case. This article documents how legal representation operates within this context. Based on an ethnographic fieldwork on asylum actors and procedures in Canada, it makes two contributions to research on refugee decision-making. First, it places refugee status determination in the inhabited institutions framework. It sheds light on how social interactions influence decision-making, demonstrating the theoretical utility of bringing this framework to bear on understanding asylum procedures. Second, the article is inspired by the concept of “strategic expertise” and the analysis focuses on the social, relational, and interpersonal aspects of the use of law by lawyers. The study shows how lawyers anticipate and shape asylum procedures to a large extent by adopting three strategies: conformity, deliberation, and contestation.