Finding the Right Immigration Attorneys

Finding the right immigration law firm depends primarily on your company's size and needs.  The common mistakes most employers make is confusing needs and wants.  Below are common needs based on the company's stage of development.StartUp Companies.  At the early stages of development, finding an immigration provider that can help prepare an H-1B or answering your questions about a foreign student's OPT options is critical.  But the attorneys should also be skilled in guiding you through this growth stage because your internal resources for navigating the immigration minefield is limited.  The ideal provider should assist with

Providing basic Immigration 101 training to your HR team or Recruiters

Being creative with alternatives to an H-1B in the event your desired employee candidate missed out on the H-1B lottery or wasn't selected.

Helping to develop compliance programs with your HR.

Your immigration counsel should be willing and able to provide a high level of service, to get your company on the right track for growth.  This includes direct contact with employees and candidates.

Small/Medium-Sized Businesses.  At this stage of growth, the employee count is usually in the low hundreds but growth is either steady or fast.  This means your HR is actively working on expanding its internal offerings and a Recruiting Team is entrenched in that relationship with HR.  Your immigration counsel should serve as your partner to help you scale, attract and retain employees.  They should

Work with your recruiters to develop recruiting tactics that distinguishes your company from your competitors.

Help your HR department develop immigration policies that align with your company's vision (and make it attractive to employees)

Review and revise existing immigration compliance programs to ensure legal compliance

Provide fast turnaround on immigration cases.  Nothing says awesome like on-boarding a newly transferred recruit in a week!

Providing cutting-edge technology to reduce inefficiencies.  At this stage of growth, direct attorney to employee contact may have to be reassessed in order to scale efficiently.

Large Enterprises.  At this stage of growth, most companies are seeking Immigration Attorneys to provide them with optimized servicing, not white-glove service.  Because thousands of employees are being relocated from one unit to another, or hundreds of candidates are hired monthly, the volume alone requires the vendor to already have efficient systems in place to manage the workload.  With the exception of high-level executives, most employees will probably not receive direct and detailed contact from attorneys.  The Immigration Partners would

Work with your recruiters to communicate relocation status of transferees and recruits.

Carry out and reinforce immigration policies through widespread information dissemination to employees.

Review and revise existing immigration compliance programs to ensure legal compliance

Provide automated systems to ensure fast on-boarding of employees and processing of immigration cases.  This usually means providing a platform for employees to update data, check status, and understand how the immigration policy is being executed.

The favorite topic of many companies, regardless of what stage of growth they are in, is SCALING. But scaling when you're a 2-person company and scaling when you're a 20,000-person company require vastly different approaches.  Remember those points and you'll secure the right partner any day!