Foreign-trained lawyer + US LL.M.: employer sponsorship vs self-petition for a green card Forum
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AlexGreene2026
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- Joined: Fri Oct 30, 2026 7:33 am
Foreign-trained lawyer + US LL.M.: employer sponsorship vs self-petition for a green card
I finished an LL.M. at a mid-tier US law school about a year ago and I am currently on OPT, working as a contract attorney at a mid-size firm. Before coming to the US I practiced commercial litigation for about five years in my home country, and I passed a state bar exam last year. I am trying to figure out the green card route before my OPT time runs out, and I keep going back and forth between two paths.Path 1: find an employer willing to sponsor an H-1B (with the lottery risk) and then go through PERM after a few years. From what I hear, big firms mostly do this, but smaller firms almost never want to touch immigration paperwork.Path 2: try a self-petition instead, either EB-1A or EB-2 NIW, so I am not dependent on any employer. My profile is decent but not spectacular: a few law review pieces in modest journals, recommendation letters from former colleagues and one professor, no big awards or headline cases.Questions for anyone who has walked one of these roads:1. For someone with a foreign JD equivalent plus a US LL.M., does the employer PERM route realistically end up in the same place as a self-petition, or is it years behind?2. For those who attempted EB-1A or NIW as lawyers rather than researchers: what evidence actually carried weight and what got waved off? Does "impact on the field" even make sense for practicing lawyers, or does that route only really work for people with academic or STEM-style records?3. For the employer route: how early in the process did you raise sponsorship, and did it actually cost you callbacks at smaller firms?Any first-hand experience would be appreciated. I would rather make this choice now than find out in two years that I picked the slow lane.
