We also had a bad lawyer that gave us similar advice. Told my partner to apply to extend his OWP even though we did not have an active sponsorship application on file. The application was obviously unsuccessful and as a result my partner was out of status when we applied. We didn’t even know we had an option to change his status to a visitor before his OWP expired. A lot of incompetent and money hungry lawyers, very disappointing. At least you can still do restoration.