Sophie Alcorn founded her own immigration-focused boutique law firm a few years ago, that has quickly become a go-to resource for founders and tech workers in the Bay Area and beyond.
While immigration paperwork acceptance rates have been dropping for immigration paperwork under tougher requirements set by the Trump Administration, especially for H-1Bs, Alcorn says her firm is able to get 95% through on H-1Bs, with higher rates for some visa types.
In the interview below, she shares some of the secrets of her success, as well as the challenges she’s overcome in the process of building her own company. You also can find dozens of quotes from satisfied clients at the end.
And, if you, a colleague or loved one is looking to immigrate, she also has written up an article for Extra Crunch that breaks down the wide range of visas that you can choose from. You can read it here.
On her approach
“I’ve been following a set of simple principles that have guided my work that were maybe overkill under the Obama Administration, but are leading to a really high success rate under the Trump Administration like really giving a shit about our clients, and what their goals are, and what their dreams are, and how immigration can be used as a tool to help them get from point A to point B. And then that allows us to be more creative about the specific visa route that we want to pursue, and not taking shortcuts that other lawyers might take.”
On common startup mistakes
“Sometimes lawyers do a really skeletal bare-bones job on the initial application knowing that they’ll get paid extra when there’s a request for more evidence from the government. We don’t do that.”
Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures.
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The Interview
Eric Eldon: How’d you get into working with startups and specifically into the immigration law world, which is in some ways is a niche within a niche within a niche. It seems like you carved out a really big practice there just based on the reader responses I’ve seen so far.
Sophie Alcorn: Well, the beginning was that I have immigration in my blood. My dad practiced immigration law for over 35 years in Southern California and my mom is an immigrant from Germany. I grew up working in my dad’s Southern California law firm and basically doing every job there. I moved back to the Bay Area.