Dallas, May 11, 2022 – Innovative immigration firm BAL took home the Texas Consilium’s Business Excellence Award for the best mid-sized company in all of Texas, the most prestigious award for business excellence in the state. The mid-sized category comprises Texas companies with $100 million to $1 billion in revenue.

BAL was honored Monday night with the trophy at an awards gala that recognized the foremost Texas organizations and business leaders who are excelling in their efforts and expanding the vision of what is possible.

“This award recognizing excellence is a huge honor, and reflects the accomplishments of our amazing BAL family,” said Jeremy Fudge, Managing Partner of BAL. “Our secret sauce is our culture and our common spirit of pursuing the exceptional in everything we do, and it’s our incredible people who make BAL such a successful organization and a truly unique and special place to work.”

An award-winning immigration firm, BAL exemplifies the Texas Consilium’s model of a “continuous improvement journey.” BAL is not only the world’s leading immigration law firm – the trailblazing firm continues to expand and challenge traditional boundaries, by leveraging its expertise in areas like technology, customer service, corporate training, and operational excellence.

With its headquarters in Richardson, Texas, BAL has rapidly expanded its nationwide footprint, recently opening offices in Austin, Chicago, and Denver. “We have an innovative spirit that is constantly pushing onward,” said Fudge. “And the strength of our firm is the unique talent of each team member.  We all bring different strengths, backgrounds, education, and skills. I tell employees, ‘That unique combination you have—only you can contribute that in the whole world.’”

Hear BAL Managing Partner Jeremy Fudge discuss the “oneBAL” culture, why BAL is unlike other law firms, and our nontraditional organizational structure in this interview with the Texas Consilium: https://vimeo.com/410781360

About the Texas Consilium
The Texas Consilium is a collective of highly-seasoned, world class business advisors who serve Texas companies and the local economy by helping improve their businesses. The annual Texas Consilium Awards were established to recognize leading Texas businesses that inspire others to improve and pursue their own journey of excellence.

About Berry Appleman & Leiden (BAL)
BAL, the world’s leading corporate immigration law firm, ranks #1 on the Diversity Scorecard by The American Lawyer (2020 and 2021), #1 on Law360’s Diversity Snapshot (2020 and 2021), and the #1 Law Firm for Women according to the National Law Journal (2019, 2020 and 2021). BAL’s Cobalt® digital immigration services platform won the 2020 CODiE Award for Best Legal Tech Product, the prestigious CIO100 award for Innovative Use of Intelligent Automation in Immigration Services, and Legalweek’s Most Innovative Law Firm Operations Team of 2021. BAL is singularly focused on meeting the immigration challenges of corporate clients around the world in ways that make immigration more strategic and enable clients to be more successful. Established in 1980, BAL has consistently provided immigration expertise, top-notch information security and leading technology innovation. The firm entered into a strategic alliance with Deloitte UK to create the world’s first global immigration service delivery model. BAL and its leaders are highly ranked in every major legal publication, including Best Lawyers®, Chambers and Partners, The Legal 500, and Who’s Who Legal. See website for details: https://www.bal.com

Media Contact:
Emily Albrecht
Senior Director — Marketing & Communications
ealbrecht@bal.com
469-559-0174

As H-1B cap registrations reached a new high and employers are gearing up to file their cap petitions, the business community should prepare for the recruiting challenges introduced by the registration lottery system and compounded by a competitive job market.

The U.S. unemployment rate reached a 50-year low while job openings hit 11.3 million in January. Without enough domestic workers to fill critical vacancies, companies depend on sponsoring H-1B employees, but a multiple-offer environment has some employers considering whether to sweeten the pot with creative recruitment strategies.

How does the lottery impact recruitment? This was the third cap season in which U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) used the electronic H-1B registration process, requiring petitioners to enter a simple registration and pay a $10 fee for H-1B candidates. With such a low bar to register and high demand, USCIS received 483,927 registrations this season, 308,613 last year and 274,237 the year before – far exceeding the annual quotas on H-1B visas.

Even with this record number of registrations, USCIS held three lotteries last year and two the year before. Why multiple lotteries? The ability to fill all available H-1B visas—65,000 for the regular cap and 20,000 for the master’s cap—from lottery selections depends on USCIS receiving enough approvable petitions. When all available numbers aren’t used, USCIS conducts another lottery.

With historically low unemployment rates, it is increasingly common for several employers to pursue the same H-1B candidate. Multiple employers may sponsor the same H-1B beneficiary if each registration represents a legitimate business offer. If the foreign worker is fortunate enough to have more than one registration selected on his or her behalf, the sponsoring employers may choose to enhance the terms of their employment – including perks related to immigration sponsorship – to land the employee.

For example, H-1B employees typically want to bring their family members to the U.S., and companies may offer to pay visa fees and provide green card support to an employee’s spouse and children.

Additionally, H-1B employees intend to stay long-term and become U.S. permanent residents, so companies could consider offering green card support and broadening which employees they support if they currently restrict eligibility based on position or tenure. Likewise, the timing of green card support can be an attractive incentive because of chronic green card backlogs and years-long wait times. Employers who provide green card sponsorship on Day 1 might be better situated to woo H-1B employees.

Companies may also offer incentives to make the move to the U.S. easier for H-1B employees and their family, such as cultural integration assistance, local school tours and other services that demonstrate concern for the employee and may have an emotional appeal.

As businesses reboot from COVID, employees are increasingly demanding remote or hybrid work flexibilities. Nearly 20% of all high-paying professional jobs are now permanently remote, and experts predict that number will rise to 25% by the end of the year. With rising housing and gas costs, the economic benefits of remote work may be an attractive offering as well.

While USCIS works to refine its H-1B selection processes, employers must work with the challenges of the current system. That means making competitive offers, and considering other creative incentives to attract global talent.

Delya Ghosh is a Partner in the San Francisco office of Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP (BAL). With a breadth of experience, she serves clients of all sizes in a diverse range of industries, offering strategic counsel on corporate immigration law.

DALLAS, May 5, 2022 – Immigration powerhouse BAL is a finalist for the 2022 SIIA CODiE Award in the Best Legal Solution category for the firm’s proprietary case-management technology, Cobalt®. CODiE finalists represent the best products, technologies and services in software, information and business technology. Winners will be announced next month.

The 2022 CODiE Award judges called Cobalt a “great solution for a growing problem” and said the software has “very strong and customizable reporting capabilities.”

“We’re honored that the judges have recognized Cobalt and its most recent upgrades that provide peak performance to our business clients and their employees,” said BAL Chief Technology Officer Chanille Juneau. “Cobalt consistently enables us to fulfil our promise of making the immigration journey smoother for clients who depend on our legal teams to submit immigration petitions as flawlessly and efficiently as possible.”

BAL’s proprietary software Cobalt® is a dynamic case management system that offers lightning-speed performance with minimal downtime thanks to our Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) upgrade and a new proprietary reporting tool, DataPro, that streamlines essential business intelligence for both the firm and our clients.

IaC allows BAL’s products team to code Cobalt’s infrastructure, guaranteeing stability and scalability, while also providing consistency, speed and disaster recovery reliability. Efficiencies gained from IaC enabled our team to create DataPro, a first-in-class tool that provides accurate, fast and customizable reporting functions to help clients keep track of key metrics on their global workforce.

Additional upgrades enable Cobalt to handle millions of user searches and document uploads, essential capacities in the document-heavy practice of corporate immigration law.

“We have invested in developing this technology to best serve our clients’ evolving needs in volume, usability and efficiency,” said Managing Partner Jeremy Fudge. “It’s truly unique in this industry to have an in-house products team working hand-in-hand with our legal teams to solve immigration challenges by creating world-class technological tools.”

The CODiE Awards, the long-running, premier awards program for the software and information industries are produced by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software, education, media and digital content industries. BAL was picked as one of 137 finalists across 43 business categories. CODiE Award winners will be announced during the virtual award celebration on June 8- 9.

Media Contact:

Kasey S. Pipes

817.542.3870

kasey@corleypipes.com

About Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP (BAL)

BAL, the world’s leading corporate immigration law firm, ranks #1 on the Diversity Scorecard by The American Lawyer (2020 and 2021), #1 on Law360’s Diversity Snapshot (2020 and 2021), and the #1 Law Firm for Women according to the National Law Journal (2019, 2020 and 2021). BAL’s Cobalt® digital immigration services platform won the 2020 CODiE Award for Best Legal Tech Product, the prestigious CIO100 award for Innovative Use of Intelligent Automation in Immigration Services, and Legalweek’s Most Innovative Law Firm Operations Team of 2021. BAL is singularly focused on meeting the immigration challenges of corporate clients around the world in ways that make immigration more strategic and enable clients to be more successful. Established in 1980, BAL has consistently provided immigration expertise, top-notch information security and leading technology innovation. The firm entered into a strategic alliance with Deloitte UK to create the world’s first global immigration service delivery model. BAL and its leaders are highly ranked in every major legal publication, including Best Lawyers®, Chambers and Partners, The Legal 500, and Who’s Who Legal. See website for details: https://www.bal.com