EB-1A and legal creativity - why rules should not always be followed

We got an EB-1A approved the other day for an Indian national.

A case that was supposedly “weak” and that other firms had refused to take.

A case where our client’s company’s lawyers kept interfering with his case.

They even tried to advise our client based on the wrong legal standards:

• They claimed that in order for my client to qualify for EB-1A, he had to be pretty much one of the top 10 scientists that his high level references had ever met.
• USCIS themselves clarified this back when they promulgated the regulations by explicitly, outright stating that EB-1A was not meant to be restricted to the top 10 or so individuals in a field, but more so to the small percentage of individuals who were able to rise to the top of their field (a small percentage but not top 10 people).

We ignored the clearly incorrect advice given by our client’s company’s lawyers.

So they decided to be difficult in another way - when our client tried to get letters of support from his managers, they were advised by the company’s lawyers to not sign off on them.

Folks (and I mean company lawyers), you can’t always do things by the book.?

Just because you were taught specific rules that HAD to be followed for EB-1A does not mean those rules HAVE TO APPLY for a case to get approved.

I have worked for many different law firms, partners, and senior attorneys. They all seem to have different ideas about what the rules are. I have heard some of them say that a person cannot qualify for EB-1A unless they have at least 1,000 citations and preferred to handle cases with 10,000 citations or more. But I personally know that this rule is not a good guideline because I’ve filed dozens of approved cases where the person had less than 1,000 citations.

As lawyers, we should be pushing the boundaries of the law through creative legal arguments that allow more individuals to meet legal criteria.?

Only by testing legal boundaries can we expand a legal benefit to even more individuals.

For this case, we took an especially creative legal approach that ultimately got our client his EB-1A approval.

He had a priority date from a while back so was able to adjust immediately.?

He’s now about to file for a green card.

Sometimes, all it takes is some legal creativity and taking a reasonable approach to the law.?

Straightforward, ideal cases are great, but not everyone will fit the bill in some attorney’s minds according to the way they were trained.

That’s ok because there may be other factors to your case that can support a different legal argument as to how to meet the EB-1A criteria.

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Interested in EB-1A, EB-2 NIW or O-1? Feel free to reach out at [email protected] or via LinkedIn messages and I’ll get back to you shortly!

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