Dear @Refusegee,
thank you for waiting. So a residence permit "Aufenthaltserlaubnis" according to § 18 AufenthG can be given to you if you have a job in Germany. There are certain prerequisites:
- the income through your job has to secure your living costs and you need to be insured through your job,
- your identity has to be clarified,
- there are no reasons for expulsion (f. e. highly criminal acts)
- you did travel to Germany with the necessary visa (in your case a work visa). So this might be a problem in your case as you came here to apply for asylum. But there are some possibilities for exceptions.
So your lawyer is probably right that you could just try to go to Ausländerbehörde and apply for the residence permit. Via this page you can find a list of documents that the Ausländerbehörde wants to have during the application process. If you are not from the Federal State Berlin, just ignore the prerequisites regarding Berlin:
https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/305304/en/
Please keep in mind that even if they don´t want to give you an Aufenthaltserlaubnis recording to § 18 AufenthG (f. e. because you didnt come here with the right visa), there might also be other possbilities for you since you don´t know the outcome yet of your asylum procedure.
I totally understand that you somehow want to secure your living situation in Germany and don´t want to wait for your asylum procedure to end. I would therefore recommend you to maybe go see another counselling office (via this link you can find free and trustworthy ones close to you - **** for one that is specialised in work/education issues) and get a second opionion about your options.
I hope this was helpful for you. Please don´t hesitate reaching out to the Wefugees Community if you have further questions!
All the best
Melina
Note: Please keep in mind that we can´t provide qualified legal advice via the internet and that any information given can´t replace such legal advice.