Position: Senior Associate Attorney, Business Immigration
Reports To: Partner, U.S. Immigration Practice
Location: Phoenix, Arizona, hybrid and flexible within Arizona. Arizona residency is required, either at hire or through a prompt relocation, and relocation is supported with a lump-sum allowance.
Travel: 10-15%, periodic client engagement alongside the Practice Partner and association presence (AILA, Worldwide ERC)
Compensation: Competitive base salary and full company benefit package, with compensation reviewed as the practice scales.
Chamberlain Advisors is conducting a search on behalf of CIBT, Inc. and its global immigration consultancy Newland Chase for the first practitioner attorney of the firm's new Arizona-based Alternative Business Structure, the first captive U.S. employment-based corporate immigration practice in the company's history. This is the most consequential growth initiative the company has undertaken, and it is now live: the U.S. Immigration Practice Partner is in seat owning client development and firm strategy, and the platform, the case management system, and the first client onboardings are being completed now. This role is the substantive legal engine beneath that mandate. The attorney who takes it will carry the caseload that establishes the practice's reputation, founder and self-petition matters, new-office expansions, and the full nonimmigrant and immigrant stack, held to the white-glove standard the firm is building its U.S. brand on, inside a private-equity-backed platform operating in twenty-three countries.
Core Profile: alignment with the following is required to get you in the conversation
- Arizona Licensure & Regulatory Discipline: Living in Arizona, or relocating there promptly, is the first requirement in this search: several case types still file on paper and need a wet signature from the attorney of record on the ground. Active Arizona admission at hire is the fastest path and the preferred profile. Admitted elsewhere with five or more years of practice, you qualify for admission on motion under Arizona Supreme Court Rule 34(f), roughly four months, and may practice on a pending basis meanwhile. The firm supports the admission and the relocation. You will practice inside a newly designated Arizona Alternative Business Structure under live regulatory oversight, which asks for a clean disciplinary record, working awareness of unauthorized-practice limits where Arizona's framework is not recognized, and the discipline to raise a scope question early rather than absorb it. You will support the Practice Lead through the semiannual ABS audit and the two-year redesignation review; you will not own that perimeter alone.
- Employment-Based Immigration Practice: You will bring hands-on depth across the U.S. employment-based system, with real repetition behind it rather than exposure. Your nonimmigrant background covers H-1B (cap, cap-exempt, transfers), L-1A and L-1B including new-office petitions, O-1A and O-1B, TN, and E-3; your immigrant background covers PERM, I-140 across EB-1A and EB-2 National Interest Waiver, EB-2 and EB-3, I-485, and consular processing. Breadth across case types matters more here than raw case count, because the early book runs to self-petition, new-office, and green-card work rather than one high-count lane. The craft a high-volume practice teaches transfers directly: batching PERM filings, running a clean cap season under e-registration, and holding a deadline-driven docket without dropping a date. You will be named attorney of record on your own filings and own your docket from intake through adjudication. This practice needs a practitioner who does the work, not one who reviews it.
- Practice Craft & Operating Contribution: You will join a practice whose platform is already standing: the case management system is configured, the first clients are onboarded, and your first day is a live matter, not a setup project. What you contribute is refinement, not architecture: the exhibit and RFE-response template libraries, the intake and quality-control routines, and the improvements that keep the process sound as the caseload grows. You will work alongside a paralegal based with you in Phoenix, delegating H-1B, standard L-1, and routine nonimmigrant work and reserving your time for the O-1, National Interest Waiver, PERM strategy, and procedural defense that genuinely requires an attorney. You will also sit closer to case preparation than a large-firm attorney does, since there is no overnight prep bench behind you at launch.
- Client Service & Commercial Contribution: You will be the practitioner clients trust, in a practice competing on elevated, white-glove service rather than volume. You will work directly with mobility leaders, HR executives, in-house counsel, founders, and self-petitioning individuals, contributing the substantive legal view while the Practice Lead carries strategy, pricing, and the relationship. You will hold the firm's twenty-four-hour response standard across APAC, LATAM, and EMEA time zones, staying proactive rather than reactive, so clients are never in the dark and never surprised. Senior leadership owns the revenue number, the pipeline, and the pitch; you are introduced once the work is won, join the client cadence as the legal voice, and grow into client ownership as the book matures. This seat carries no revenue target at hire, and the path into one is real for the attorney who wants it.
- Leadership, Partnership, & Culture: You will bring high EQ, low ego, the versatility to partner with senior practitioners one hour and sophisticated corporate clients the next, and genuine self-direction. This is a small Arizona footprint inside a globally distributed firm, so you will work with real independence rather than inside an office of colleagues, far enough along to run your own day unsupervised. Your group is a Practice Lead who is also running the firm's global immigration consulting practice, Immigration Co-Chairs in London and Brazil, a Regional Lead in Houston, and a CHRO: a small, distributed senior group with no appetite for hierarchy or sharp elbows. Because the practice is early and the firm is small, your voice carries: how it operates as volume grows is a conversation you are part of, not one handed to you. The attorney who expects inherited big-firm infrastructure, treats quasi-legal or operational work as beneath them, needs a finished playbook before moving, or wants to be the face of the practice rather than the engine behind it will not succeed here.
Core Responsibilities & Scope Of Work
Employment-Based Immigration Casework
- Nonimmigrant Visa Filings: Draft and file the full nonimmigrant stack, H-1B (cap, cap-exempt, and transfers), L-1A and L-1B including new-office petitions, O-1A and O-1B, TN, and E-3, as named attorney of record on every Form G-28 you sign.
- Immigrant Lifecycle: Manage PERM, I-140 across EB-1A, EB-1B, EB-1C and EB-2 National Interest Waiver, EB-2 and EB-3, I-485 adjustment of status, and consular processing across the EU, APAC, and LATAM.
- RFE & NOID Response: Author responses to Requests for Evidence and Notices of Intent to Deny; diagnose LCA defects and other procedural failures quickly and remediate them without status interruption to the beneficiary.
- Docket Ownership: Manage a high-volume, deadline-driven caseload independently from intake through adjudication, holding accuracy and timeliness at the standard that will define the practice's early reputation.
- Volume Craft: Apply the working discipline that a high-volume practice teaches, batching PERM filings, sequencing cap-season work under e-registration, and protecting the calendar so a deadline never depends on a good week.
Founder, Self-Petition & Complex Matters
- New-Office & Cross-Border Expansion: Advise founders and early-stage companies on new-office L-1 petitions and the cross-border expansion strategy surrounding them, from entity structure through beneficiary eligibility.
- Self-Petition Immigrant Matters: Handle self-sponsored and self-petition matters end-to-end, particularly EB-1A and EB-2 National Interest Waiver cases, which the practice expects to carry a meaningful share of its early caseload.
- Nonstandard Case Strategy: Develop tailored strategies for higher-complexity matters that fall outside routine processing, including cases where the evidentiary record must be constructed rather than collected.
- Transactional Immigration Support: Support employee populations affected by corporate transactions, entity changes, counsel transitions, and cross-border deployment, preserving employment authorization and minimizing disruption to the workforce and the client relationship.
Client Service & Delivery
- Client Advising Support: Contribute the substantive legal view on immigration strategy, timelines, risk management, and regulatory compliance, working alongside the Practice Lead, who carries the consultative and advisory relationship overall.
- Service-Level Discipline: Uphold the firm's twenty-four-hour client response standard across APAC, LATAM, and EMEA time zones, building the workflow discipline that absorbs off-hours volume without a service breach.
- Client Cadence Support: Join client business reviews, scoping conversations, and new-business pursuits alongside the Practice Lead and commercial leadership as the substantive legal voice, once the work is won.
- White-Glove Standard: Deliver the elevated, boutique service standard the practice is competing on at launch, where responsiveness and judgment are the differentiators against higher-volume incumbents.
Practice Craft & Operations
- Case Management Contribution: Offer suggestions and continuous-improvement recommendations on the firm's case management platform (INSZoom or comparable), including intake templates, expiration tracking, and templates for repeat petition types. The platform is configured before you arrive; you improve it rather than own it.
- Paralegal Partnership: Work day to day with a paralegal based with you in Phoenix, delegating H-1B, standard L-1, and routine nonimmigrant work while reserving attorney time for O-1, National Interest Waiver, PERM strategy, and procedural defense. Additional support scales in from the firm's Americas and offshore hubs as the caseload grows.
- Template & Exhibit Libraries: Build and maintain exhibit libraries, RFE response templates, and drafting standards that make quality repeatable as the caseload grows.
- Quality Control: Maintain rigorous quality control and uphold ethical and professional standards across every filing, flagging re-work risk and capacity constraints to leadership early rather than absorbing them quietly.
Compliance, Licensure & Professional Growth
- Arizona Licensure: Hold Arizona bar admission at hire, or complete Arizona Supreme Court Rule 34(f) admission on motion from a reciprocal jurisdiction with firm support, practicing on a pending basis during the roughly four-month process; maintain any additional admissions the client book requires.
- ABS Compliance Support: Support the Practice Lead on the semiannual ABS audit response, the two-year redesignation review with the Arizona Supreme Court, and the working relationship with outside ethics counsel.
- Regulatory Horizon Scanning: Monitor USCIS and DOL rulemaking and broader U.S. immigration policy developments, flagging material changes that affect client matters proactively rather than reactively.
- Growth Path: Grow into mentorship and supervision of junior legal and paralegal staff, expanded client ownership, and a larger leadership role in the practice as the book scales.
Qualifications
- Juris Doctor (J.D.) from an accredited U.S. law school, in good standing with all bar admissions and a clean disciplinary record.
- Five to ten years of post-bar experience in U.S. employment-based business immigration. Five years is a firm floor and roughly seven is the target profile, with hands-on reps across both the nonimmigrant and immigrant categories.
- Active Arizona bar admission at hire strongly preferred. Candidates admitted elsewhere with five or more years of practice are eligible for Rule 34(f) admission on motion, which runs roughly four months and permits practice on a pending basis, and will be considered where practice depth is strong.
- Direct, high-volume command of the nonimmigrant stack, H-1B (cap, cap-exempt, and transfers), L-1A and L-1B including new-office petitions, O-1A and O-1B, TN, and E-3.
- Working command of the immigrant lifecycle, PERM, I-140, EB-2 and EB-3, I-485 adjustment of status, and consular processing.
- Demonstrated experience with self-sponsored and self-petition green card matters, particularly EB-1A and EB-2 National Interest Waiver.
- Demonstrated experience advising founders and early-stage companies on new-office L-1 petitions and cross-border expansion.
- Strong drafting skills and the ability to independently manage a high-volume, deadline-driven docket without close supervision.
- Experience serving corporate clients as a peer-level advisor to mobility leaders, HR executives, and in-house counsel. Client size and firm pedigree are not filters in this search; breadth across case types is what matters.
- Experience within a multinational legal or immigration services firm, or a corporate immigration practice at a national firm, preferred.
- Familiarity with global mobility programs, cross-border immigration issues, and immigration technology or legal practice management platforms.
- Comfort operating inside a practice that is still early, where process is improved in flight rather than inherited, and where quasi-legal and operational contribution is part of the job.
- High EQ, low-ego operator, responsive across time zones, credible with both senior practitioners and corporate buyers, and direct about problems without defensiveness.
- Self-directed enough to run a small Arizona footprint inside a globally distributed firm, without an office of colleagues alongside you.
- Arizona residency at hire, or a firm willingness to relocate to Arizona promptly, with relocation supported. This is the first requirement we screen on.
About Our Client
CIBT, Inc. is a global immigration and corporate travel services platform serving multinational employers and government clients through more than 1,300 employees across 23 countries worldwide. Newland Chase, CIBT's global corporate immigration consultancy, supports cross-border talent strategies for some of the world's largest corporations, delivering visa, work authorization, and mobility services across Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East. With more than three decades of operating history, the firm holds long-standing relationships with the multinational mobility, HR, and in-house counsel buyers who govern global workforce strategy at scale.
With Arizona's approval of the firm's Alternative Business Structure designation, CIBT / Newland Chase has launched its first dedicated U.S. legal practice, the most ambitious growth initiative in the company's history and the operating thesis behind the next chapter of platform value creation. The practice is led by a U.S. Immigration Practice Partner who also heads the firm's global immigration consulting business, and it will compete first on elevated, white-glove service to a boutique client base before scaling toward volume. This attorney is the first practitioner hire into that practice, the person who will carry the caseload that builds its reputation and shape the way the work gets done. Because the practice is new and the firm is not large, the seat carries unusual influence over how it grows, from service model to support structure to where the practice builds capacity next. For an attorney five to ten years into a corporate immigration career, it offers the substance and sophistication of a top-tier practice, the ground-floor upside of a new one, and the institutional backing of one of the largest names in global mobility, without the administrative burden of running the business.
