Verified Expert Lawyer: Sophie Alcorn

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.”

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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

Sophie Alcorn Alcorn Immigration Law Silicon Valley San Francisco 03

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.

I originally came here for Stanford, but I moved back here about seven years ago when I had a one-year-old. I was a stay-at-home mom for several years, and three years ago after my dad died I was facing a divorce and I wasn’t making any money, and I was really, really stuck. And so I decided that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and that I would try to open my own law firm.

But I’ve been working in immigration law since I was 15 years old. I was the file clerk, and the receptionist, and a paralegal, and young associate, and I’ve done pretty much every type of immigration law case under the sun. But I took about four years off after I became a lawyer to be a stay-at-home mom with my two kids who are now eight and five.

I was trying to use all my lawyer skills on mothering, which don’t translate like researching child psychology and trying to make an outline of best practices.

That was not a good fit for me. I remember being at the park all the time in Mountain View with my kids talking to other parents and they were usually from other countries, and they were usually super freaked out about their family’s immigration process, or they would be working at big tech companies and they would be managers, and they would always be super pissed off that the process was just obscure, and that the law firms they were typically working with were not transparent about details, or timing, or process.

They always seemed frustrated that stuff was slipping through the cracks and that the people they needed couldn’t be here on time. So I just heard dissatisfaction from all sides of this world.

Then, four years ago, my dad was killed, and I ended up not inheriting his law firm. I realized that I wanted to help carry on his legacy, but I was afraid. When he was still alive, I was thinking: I haven’t been an entrepreneur before, how do I become a rainmaker? How do I make sure that my employees have stability? I don’t know how to run a business.

But then after he died, I realized that I had the strength to do this, and I really wanted to carry on his legacy. And also I was looking at a divorce. I didn’t have a job here, and I hadn’t worked for four years, and I didn’t know how I could continue to live in Silicon Valley without generating an income for myself.

And so I took a class at Stanford called Building a Career of Meaning and Impact with Agnes Le. She inspired me to just take a design-thinking approach and consider different mini experiments that I could do to test different hypotheses.

From that class I actually got work. I got 42 H-1B visas three weeks before the April 1st filing deadline. I basically took the mindset from that class and I was like, “All right. Let’s see what this is like.”

I ended up going to the company, working from their office, pulling all-nighters to get these 42 H-1Bs done in three weeks. And I loved it. It’s so different from parenting. There’s a definite endpoint, you know if you win or lose, you get money at the end of it, somebody’s grateful.

These are all things that often don’t happen as a parent. It was really inspiring. And so from there I thought, “Wow, maybe there’s room for me to be an immigration lawyer in Silicon Valley. I see the need, and maybe I can hang my own shingle and do this.”

So then I was thinking about, “Okay. What’s the scope of this going to be?” I remember my ex-husband wanted me to get a URL like “Mountain View Immigration Lawyer.”. My marketing advisor Joanna Buniak encouraged me to think a lot bigger than that and there was a lot more potential here.

At first, I was working from my kitchen with trying to make baby food and clean up spit up while also typing notes and getting legal work done. And then I went to a co-working space, and was carting around my laptop and my briefcase with files and meeting people at Starbucks.

And then another H-1B season was coming and I was looking at getting maybe 100 H-1Bs the next year. I had thought that I could do everything paperless, that I would go green, that I would save the planet and not use paper. But the immigration service, USCIS, is not really paperless at all.

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And so my biggest fear was, “Oh my God, where am I going to put all this paperwork all the time? I need like a workspace. I need countertops. I need a scanner.” I leased my first office in Downtown Mountain View, and leased a photocopier.

I remember one of my biggest fears was, “Crap, I have a three-year lease on this photocopier. If my business fails, what am I going to do with this photocopier for the next three years? I don’t have any space in my tiny little house to keep it.”

But it kind of just blew up from there. 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. 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.

A lot of lawyers send their clients to government interviews without the lawyer and that can lead to major problems sometimes, and so we don’t do that. Just being creative, and ethical, and strategic to help our clients have the best shot at winning.

Because of that I think we have, I think the website says 95% success rate, but I think it’s actually, those numbers are kind of old, and I think it’s actually much higher. It’s probably closer to like 97 or 98% success rate-

Eldon: What is the norm? Do you know?

Alcorn: Well, I recently read that statistics for H-1Bs were released and that has dropped down to about 73% as the national average. It had been I think in the 90%’s under Obama. We could confirm looking at USCIS and some press releases about that. But I think it’s down into the low 70s recently.

Image via Getty Images / erhui1979

Eldon: The Trump administration is claiming that they’re trying to let in people with certain skills right?

Alcorn: Yes and no. The day-to-day practical effect of the administration’s actions, regulations, orders, and who they’re hiring, and how it seems that they’re managing people, the effect is that there’s a lot more scrutiny on immigrants, there’s a lot of denials, they’re giving employers the runaround trying to chill them from applying by making it really hard. It seems to be working. People are more scared to apply and more hesitant.

The merit-based immigration thing is something that Trump has been talking about a long time. Canada, and Australia, and other countries have like a points-based system. Immigrants are good for the economy whether they’re highly-skilled or low-skilled. I think that we would need a comprehensive immigration solution for everybody, including dreamers and more family-immigration and ending border prisons holding children.

But yeah, if there were merit-based immigration, that would certainly help all of these brilliant people who really want to come to Silicon Valley. They’re just looking for a way to live here and work here legally, and to try to start their companies. Usually, they’re so inspired because they see the effect of their technology is really going to help a lot of people and make the world a better place. There’s no clear-cut visa for that.

Our immigration framework was really crafted in the 1960s, and so it’s like fitting square pegs in round holes trying to use these antiquated visa frameworks for modern-day startup founders. There was supposed to be something called International Entrepreneur Parole, which Obama tried to by regulation to allow startup founders to have a new immigration pathway that wouldn’t require direct personal investment.

But the Trump Administration has basically killed that program, so that’s not moving forward. There was some litigation about that with the National Venture Capital Association, but nobody’s been able to use that program effectively.

It’s a complicated landscape, so we use a variety of tools, including investor visas, where we could maybe use the IP as the investment. Or sometimes we can obtain an H-1B for a founder if we can prove there’s a true employer-employee relationship between the founder and the company, or we do a lot of green cards for people to self-sponsor based on their extraordinary ability or their work being in the national interest.

I’m a feminist and I believe that everybody should be able to succeed based on their own accomplishments, but sometimes I have to have the conversation with the founder that’s like, “Hey, I know you’re amazing.

You probably qualify for extraordinary ability, however it’s going to be a fraction of the time and a fraction of the work if you just get a green card through your U.S. citizen husband or wife who you love and are already married to.” It’s a really antiquated framework and that is a much faster and easier way to get a green card is presuming there’s a good faith marriage.

Eldon: Gotcha. And so I mean that was getting into the question I was going to ask. What are the biggest types of issues you see happening around immigration these days? What are the sorts of the things you warn people against doing? Any sort of color you can provide there?

Alcorn: Yeah. I hear a lot of crazy stories from people about how things can go wrong. For example, somebody came here from a Western European country on a tourist visa and decided to lease the office for his startup on that trip. He left on time and later made many subsequent trips to the US, usually as a business visitor. He personally invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into the business.

The kicker was that his investor visa was denied because on that very first trip they had said they were coming for tourism, but he actually leased the building. So there’s some really restrictionist enforcement And this is a guy whose company is creating jobs for lots of Americans already, and he’s stuck outside and can’t get back in to meet his investors.

It’s just a very, very narrow view that the administration is taking, which is connected to Trump’s extreme vetting order. And so that also means that visa renewals are treated as if it’s the person’s very first application with the same high level of scrutiny.

There are Requests for Evidence where if the government isn’t satisfied with what you send at the beginning, they want more and more information. Those are often not thought through all the way.

One we got was 20 pages long, and mostly boilerplate, and many of the paragraphs had about 20 question marks at the end of them because the officer who wrote it just never bothered to reread the draft and actually think about whether the information that they were requesting was relevant and needed, and about half of the things were already things that we had submitted. Another big chunk included requests for things that didn’t even apply.

I often speak to groups of international founders who are coming here to check out Silicon Valley to figure out if they want to start a company here, raise funding, and have a U.S. sales and marketing office. That’s one group. We also help hypergrowth scaling technology companies that have recently raised new rounds of funding.

Another group is people who are on H-1Bs or other types of work visas who are working at Google, or Apple, or LinkedIn, or Facebook, and they want to leave corporate life, and follow their dreams, and start their own company. The common thread is just have your eyes open because not only is this an investment of your money, it’s also an investment of your time and your energy.

I think it’s no surprise that all these unicorns were founded by immigrants and that immigrants have such a higher rate of entrepreneurialism than natural-born citizens. I think part of it is because it takes so much grit and determination to get through the immigration process, that really serves as a filter, and so the people who have what it takes to actually get through the process and make it here are going to be successful.

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Image via Getty Images / creatarka

Eldon: Well, that conversely seems to say that our process is good?

Alcorn: Let me be clear: I think it’s terrible.

Eldon: So you basically started from scratch a few years ago, and now it seems like you’re going pretty fast, and you have a lot of clients. It sounds like most of them are in tech?

Alcorn: Yeah, primarily technology companies sponsoring professionals and their families, as well as individual entrepreneurs. Lately we’ve been helping a lot of like blockchain companies, and AI, and self-driving cars, and biotech, and healthtech.

Eldon: And so it’s just been a word of mouth process of like you help somebody out and they tell their friends, and their friend is also an immigrant, and then it spreads that way. Is that how it’s been working? Tell me more about that.

Alcorn: Pretty much. We receive a lot of referrals.

Eldon: There’s an impression that immigration law is more straightforward than some of the other areas like patent law for example in the sense of like, “Here are the forms to fill out.” If you fill out the forms correctly, there’s some risk, but there is a pretty quick process….

Alcorn: That’s a myth. There are several federal judges who have written published opinions about how immigration law is one of the most complicated areas of law, how it’s as complicated or if not more complicated than the tax code. And then it’s compounded by the fact that the people who have to deal with it often don’t speak English as a first language.

The forms are deceptively simple. There are federal laws, federal regulations, administrative court decisions, federal court decisions, they interplay with state laws, and it’s extremely, extremely complex.

Take an H-1B: It’s a pain, it’s like 15 to 20 pages of forms, but there’s all of these other layers of proving the legal elements behind it and making sure that the evidence is there for every specific element and especially with startups that often don’t look like the strongest companies, and maybe where their ability to pay the immigrant could look like an issue on paper, it’s even more important to be really thorough.

If you screw up, well, that means you have to leave, right? And so one founder I had to tell him, “No, you cannot sneak into the U.S. from Mexico to meet with your Silicon Valley investors]. You may not do that.”

And then if you overstay, and you either screw up on purpose or don’t know you did it, USCIS can now put people into deportation/removal proceedings. If you’re here for more than six months and you’re out of status and you leave, you can’t come back in for three years. If you’re here for more than a year out of status and then you leave, you can’t come back in for 10 years. So it’s really complicated and the stakes are really high.

One of the things that I did was I got an extra level of certification as a legal specialist through the State Bar of California and that took doing hundreds of cases in specifics niche specialty areas, and taking a mini Bar Exam just on immigration law and getting peer-reviewed lawyers and judges.

A lot of lawyers just like fill out the forms for one type of case, but to really have an understanding of this body of law takes a lot. I credit my dad that I was able to follow in his footsteps helped all of this make a lot more sense to me from an early age.

Eldon: Just to close out, what’s your fee structure like? Can you tell me more about someone who’s looking at you like what would they expect in terms of the billing?

Alcorn: Yeah, so like 95% of what we do is all on a flat fee project basis. Rarely and occasionally do we do things on an hourly basis. Typically, we’ll have if somebody is interested in pursuing a visa, or green card, or citizenship, we’ll have a complimentary evaluation and determine if you are eligible and help you figure out the different possible strategies, and evaluate the timelines, and the investment, and what would be involved on the client’s end. And then we would give them a quote.

The types of immigration law that we do are startup immigration, self-sponsored immigration, investment immigration, corporate immigration, and family immigration.

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Founder reviews


“At a time that everything is blurry, she pointed me to the right direction with my application and guide me along the way.” — Mehmet Saruhan, Palo Alto, Data Analyst

“Sophie is a master at immigration issues. As a fellow legal scholar I send her any issues that involve immigration matters.” — Mike Goral, San Fran and LA, Tax Partner at Squar Milner in charge of Blockchain Tech Group

“Sophie’s expertise in dealing with the complexities of immigration law has helped many clients to be able to focus on their company rather than their immigration status.” — Kurt H. Taylor, Los Altos, CA, Lawyer

“Provided great advice on immigration law.” — Kaushik Balakrishnan, Mountain View, Machine Learning Research Scientist – Autonomous Driving at Ford Motor Company

“She successfully facilitated the move of the Executive Director of a large nonprofit from Europe to San Francisco.” — Janet Monfredini, San Francisco, Recruiter/Partner, www.bridgessf.com

“Sophie supported hundreds of our startups coming from overseas and looking to understand more about how to establish their operations in US (immigration as part of it)” — Federico Gobbi, San Francisco, Manager at Mind the Bridge

“Sophie works the same way that high tech companies do: with a focus on delivering results in the most efficient way possible. This is enabled by crystal clear communication and technology that clients actually want to use.” — Erick Widman, Portland, Oregon, Immigration Attorney at Passage Immigration Law

“We organized a joint event – panel discussion with Sophie Alcorn on educating diverse immigrant women on immigration law and registering business matching their idea, goal and mission. Our topics included:

  • Differences of LLC, B-corp, C-corp, nonprofit – which one matches your business idea
  • Visa option that is right for an immigrant business owner
  • Business registration and immigration paperwork
  • Immigration options for business owners
  • Challenges faced by immigrant business owners and overcoming obstacles
  • Recent changes in immigration law

You can find more information on www.femigrants.org” — Femigrants Foundation

“She is totally solution oriented based on our needs.” — Cihangir Tekcan, Turkey, Businessman

“Referrals of business clients as well as low-income clients.” — Bill Hing, San Francisco, Law Professor

“Sophie has a great team who provide clear communication and explanatory information.” — Hugh Ealey, Sydney, Australia, CFO at Taggle Systems

“She was able to help keep multiple startup founders in this country.” — A founder in Mountain View

“I am an Australian Foreign Specialist Immigration Lawyer and I like working with a specialist lawyer (Board Certified).” — A lawyer in San Jose

“Sophie Alcorn saved me in from crisis and helped me get the O1 Visa- within 3 days of submission my visa came through in 2018!” — An entrepreneur in San Francisco

“Sophie generously and effectively assisted me with several complex VISA transitions: from J2 to E3, E3 to H1B, and then H1B to Green Card. I couldn’t recommend her more highly.” — A lawyer/consultant in Palo Alto

“She helped us to choose the type of the visa which is more subtle for our case.” — An entrepreneur from Armenia

“Very organized and honest and caring and they listen to the issues very carefully and tell you about how you should proceed with the issue.” — A self-employed worker from San Diego

“Help in visas.” — A startup founder and CEO from Dallas

“She helped me with my immigration case and I don’t think I would get a better lawyer than her.” — A software engineer from Mountain View

“Helped me and my employees on visa issues.” — A CEO from San Francisco

“Sophie is our immigration lawyer and helped us navigate H1B issues and stock ownership for our immigrant employees.” — A Bay Area founder

“She helped a friend of mine stay in the country legally!” — A worker from San Francisco

“She helped in extending my business visa twice, each was 6 months. Then they advised me to apply for green card NIW. They helped through all the steps. My case was very challenging but they got through it. Sometimes they learned details at the last minute and we did the changes which helped me very much. I got my NIW approval in 13 months.” — A healthcare entrepreneur from Menlo Park

“Early-stage ideas for immigration.” — An entrepreneur from Scotland

“She’s helped a lot with immigration issues where other immigration attorneys had not been able.” — A worker from San Jose

“Exceptional quality advice & service re: immigration issues.” — An engineering manager from Mountain View

“Sophie provided an excellent level of service. I was kept informed of everything that was happening with my immigration case. Sophie outlined from the very beginning what my options were. The outcome on my cases was better than I anticipated. I was very glad that I made the decision to hire Sophie Alcorn. She is responsive, extremely knowledgeable, very honest, intelligent, cutting edge, compassionate, and committed to the rights of her client. Sophie was very professional yet personable at the same time. She was quick to respond to any question that I had. She helped me every step of the way with my immigration case. I am glad that I had her on my side. She took all of the weight off of my shoulders and handled everything that I encountered in my immigration case. I was represented better than I could have ever imagined. I realized that having a guide like Sophie through the legal system to handle my immigration case was not just necessary, but it was critical. I did make the right choice going with Sophie Alcorn as my attorney. I am extremely satisfied and I highly recommend Sophie Alcorn to anyone who has an immigration case.” — A lecturer in manufacturing and industrial engineering from Edinburg, Texas.

“She has helped with the acquirement of green card, to enable me to work in the US.” — A worker from Palo Alto

“My green card application.” — A cardiologist from North Carolina

“Sophie helped me navigate my Visa headache.” — An electrical engineer from Santa Clara

“Sophie did a great job in assisting and guiding me to file my I-140 application under EB2 NIW. My application got approved and I am just waiting for the appointment of my immigrant visa interview. She is very knowledgeable on her field and I am very much pleased and impressed with all the work that she did for me.” — A supervisor of distribution and transmission lines from Calgary, Alberta, Canada

“Sophie helped me as an immigrant founder settle in the US and scale my business. Without her I wouldn’t be able to do what I do.” — A startup founder and accelerator partner from Los Altos

“My experience is based on what I heard from Sophie Alcorn’s clients. For the last couple of years, Sophie has been sending inbound business owners my way: for pre-immigration tax planning purposes. ALL OF THEM told me that they have been EXTREMELY PLEASED when working with Alcorn Immigration Law firm. During the application process, they appreciated good advice, efficiency, hard work, and attention to details. And then, of course, the ultimate satisfaction of getting the visa… as I see it, a high percentage of Sophie Alcorn clients’ visas approved is no accident…” — A principal at a global asset protection firm in the San Francisco, Bay Area

“Examining the strength of the green card application package and initiating the process.” — A San Francisco-based founder

“I was a bit lost on what type of visa was the best for me/my situation, and Sophie guided me, professionally and kindly, in this process.” — A filmmaker from San Francisco