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File the petition yourself or with a lawyer?

Key answer

An officer has about ten to twenty minutes per petition, and you pay a lawyer for packaging your achievements so the officer instantly understands what he is looking at, in business American English; a known firm is also a mark of quality. But the achievements must be yours: a lawyer helps present them and cannot build a case from nothing. The flip side: members have seen lawyer errors - someone else's name in the case, exhibits without URLs that triggered an RFE - and advise neither trusting them blindly nor dropping their advice because of chat opinions. A budget benchmark with a lawyer: around 15 thousand dollars including filing, translations and the visa trip, without PR.

Community answers

The answers below are translated from the original Russian - the language of the community chats.

  • An officer is given ten to twenty minutes to review a petition. People consult attorneys because they know how to present your achievements and skills in a way that allows the officer to quickly and clearly understand what they are dealing with. This is not just empty talk: a petition must make an impression and be written in clear American business language. Plus, a good law firm is a kind of quality mark for the officer, as they are people too.

  • I'm not discouraging you from hiring an attorney; I worked with them on both of my cases. They can answer questions we might never be able to; often, winning a case is impossible without them, including filling out forms. However, professionalism means at least not making mistakes: ensuring you are not referred to by the wrong name in the case, that attachments are well-organized, and that you do not receive an RFE for missing URLs on web pages. Each such RFE confirms that many focus more on selling their services than on providing quality service.

  • Again, you must meet all the criteria for EB-1A, and attorneys only help present everything correctly, as phrases, words, and format are important. If you want to stretch a camel over a globe, then no reasonable attorney will be able to help you much, as that is fraudulent.

  • Determining which criteria to cover and what strategy to choose is an individual task, unique to each person, worked out with the attorney. One thing I would definitely avoid is listening to other participants and rejecting what the attorney advises, as they have your entire case before them.

  • It would be interesting for those who have already obtained an O-1 or EB-1 to share their final budget. I estimated mine to be about: six thousand for the lawyer, three thousand for the application, one thousand for translations, two thousand for attorneys for any modifications, and three thousand to travel for the visa. In total, it's definitely going to be fifteen thousand, not including the PR, which is also needed.

  • It's needed, but don't rely too much on the attorney so you won't be extremely disappointed later. It's better to understand your case in parallel; otherwise, you'll just hear general points repeated to you and adding to the bill.

The answers are anonymized community experience from the public chats, not legal advice. Officers may decide similar cases differently.

Sources

All questions on: The petition and formattingAll questions on: Process and timelinesAll questions on: General questionsAll questions on: EB-1AAll questions on: O-1 visa

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A reference page built from community experience, not legal advice. Requirements and practice change - verify on uscis.gov.

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