U.S. Immigration Practice Lead Attorney

Position: U.S. Immigration Practice Lead Attorney
Reports To: Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Location: Phoenix, Arizona — hybrid; Arizona residency strongly preferred, with relocation supported for the right candidate
Travel: 20–30% — client engagement at multinational accounts, association presence (AILA Workforce Symposium, Worldwide ERC), and periodic time in the McLean, Virginia headquarters and the Houston Americas Hub
Compensation: Competitive base salary, bonus incentive, and company benefit package.

Chamberlain Advisors is conducting an executive search on behalf of CIBT, Inc. and its global immigration consultancy Newland Chase for a founding U.S. Immigration Practice Lead Attorney — the licensed practitioner who will stand up the firm's new Arizona-based Alternative Business Structure as a captive U.S. employment-based corporate immigration practice. This is the most consequential growth initiative in the company's history: a founding-counsel seat with CEO line-of-sight, board-level visibility, and a clear mandate to convert partner-referred U.S. inbound work into a $30–$60M three-year revenue arc inside a private-equity-backed services platform with global reach.

Core Profile: alignment with the following is required to get you in the conversation

• Regulatory Compliance & Arizona Bar Admission: You will serve as founding counsel of a newly designated Arizona-based Alternative Business Structure and own the regulatory perimeter end-to-end — UPL compliance across states that do not recognize Arizona's ABS framework (California, New York, Illinois, and others), the semiannual ABS audit response, the two-year redesignation review, and the working relationship with outside ethics counsel. You bring a clean bar record, multi-state UPL awareness, and the discipline required to operate inside a regulated entity under live oversight. You will hold the Arizona bar at hire, qualify through Arizona Supreme Court Rule 34(f) reciprocity from a reciprocal jurisdiction within three to six months, or sit for the Arizona bar within twelve months of start. You will operate the firm's regulatory function with the autonomy of an owner, not the cadence of a coordinator.
• Employment-Based Immigration Practice: You bring full-stack employment-based immigration command — direct, hands-on experience as named attorney of record across the U.S. employment-based visa system. Your nonimmigrant background covers H-1B (cap, cap-exempt, transfers, and the current regulatory environment), L-1A and L-1B (including new-office and blanket), O-1A and O-1B, TN, and E-1/E-2/E-3. Your immigrant background covers PERM end-to-end (prevailing wage through audit defense), I-140 across EB-1A/B/C and EB-2 NIW, EB-2 and EB-3, I-485, and consular processing across the EU, APAC, and LATAM. You will be the named attorney of record on every Form G-28 the firm files, and you will operate as the firm's full-stack employment-based immigration capability at launch — there is no second attorney behind you.
• Practice Build & Operations: You bring a track record of building or rebuilding a practice's operating layer from the ground up — case management configuration, intake design, exhibit and template libraries, service-level standards, paralegal supervision, engagement-letter protocols, and the fee structure that powers a fixed-fee professional services book. You are comfortable in environments where the operating playbook is being written and rewritten on the fly. You will lead the build of the U.S. practice from scratch: selecting and configuring the case management platform (INSZoom or comparable), designing the intake process, setting up exhibit libraries and RFE response templates, establishing service-level standards, working with paralegals based at the Houston Americas Hub, drafting engagement letters, and designing the fee structure that will scale from roughly one hundred active matters at launch. You will partner with FP&A on invoicing, utilization, and quality.
• Commercial Growth & Client Development: You bring direct experience converting warm enterprise pipeline into committed legal work, comfort co-presenting alongside senior commercial leadership, and credibility with mobility leaders, HR executives, and in-house counsel buyers at multinational clients. You will convert the firm's existing warm pipeline into committed U.S. business and grow the book toward a $30–$60M three-year target. Newland Chase global accounts, the Houston Americas Hub, and the consulting practice will refer mobility, HR, and in-house counsel buyers at multinational clients who already work with the brand outside the U.S. Your work is recapturing revenue currently routed to outside referral firms and winning new mid-market logos in partnership with the Chief Revenue Officer; this role owns commercial outcomes, not only case work.
• Leadership, Partnership, & Culture: You bring high EQ and the versatility to partner with senior legal practitioners one hour and sophisticated corporate clients the next — credibility across registers, zero hierarchy, no sharp elbows. You will work closely with a senior leadership team spread across geographies: two regional Co-Chairs based in London and Brazil who hold meaningful sign-off on hiring decisions, a CEO who acts as final arbiter on strategy, a Regional Lead at the Houston Americas Hub, a CHRO accountable for culture and pace, and an internal program lead supporting the ABS launch. You are decisive on business calls, precise on filings, responsive to clients across time zones within twenty-four hours, and direct about what is not working — without defensiveness. The attorney who treats quasi-legal or operational work as beneath them, defers silently in rooms where dissent is needed, or expects inherited big-firm infrastructure will not succeed in this seat.

Core Responsibilities & Scope of Work:

Regulatory & ABS Stewardship

• ABS Audit & Redesignation Cycle: Lead the semiannual ABS audit response and the two-year redesignation review with the Arizona Supreme Court, working in close coordination with outside ethics counsel through the firm's first full regulatory cycle and beyond.
• Multi-State UPL Compliance: Own the unauthorized-practice perimeter across jurisdictions that do not recognize Arizona's Rule 31.1 / ABS framework — most notably California, New York, and Illinois — and shape the firm's scope of representation accordingly.
• Bar Admission & Licensure: Hold the Arizona bar at hire, qualify through Rule 34(f) reciprocity from a reciprocal jurisdiction within three to six months, or sit for the Arizona bar within twelve months of start; maintain admissions in any additional states required to serve the firm's client book.
• Regulatory Horizon Scanning: Monitor U.S. immigration policy developments, USCIS and DOL rulemaking, and Arizona Supreme Court regulatory shifts affecting ABS entities; communicate material changes proactively to clients and internal stakeholders.

Employment-Based Immigration Practice

• Nonimmigrant Visa Filings: Personally draft and file the full nonimmigrant stack — H-1B (cap, cap-exempt, transfers), L-1A and L-1B (including new-office and blanket), O-1A and O-1B, TN, and E-1/E-2/E-3 — as named attorney of record on every Form G-28.
• Immigrant Lifecycle: Personally manage PERM end-to-end (prevailing wage through audit defense), I-140 across EB-1A/B/C and EB-2 NIW, EB-2 and EB-3, I-485 adjustment of status, and consular processing across the EU, APAC, and LATAM.
• RFE, NOID & AAO Response: Author responses to Requests for Evidence, Notices of Intent to Deny, and Administrative Appeals Office filings; diagnose LCA defects and other procedural failures quickly and remediate without status interruption to the beneficiary.
• M&A & Transactional Immigration: Lead the experience design for 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.

Practice Build & Operations

• Case Management Platform: Select and configure the firm's case management platform (INSZoom or comparable), including intake templates, SLA dashboards, expiration tracking, and templates for repeat petition types across the nonimmigrant and immigrant stack.
• Paralegal Supervision Model: Build the paralegal supervision model with the Houston Americas Hub team — paralegals run H-1B, standard L-1, and routine nonimmigrant work, while attorney time is reserved for O-1, NIW, PERM strategy, and procedural defense.
• Engagement Mechanics & FP&A Partnership: Author engagement letters, define the fixed-fee economics of the practice, and partner with the firm's FP&A team on invoicing, utilization tracking, and proactive re-work risk identification.
• Service-Level Discipline: Establish and uphold the firm's twenty-four-hour client response standard across APAC, LATAM, and EMEA time zones; build the workflow discipline that absorbs off-hours volume without service breach.

Commercial Growth & Client Development

• Warm-Pipeline Conversion: Convert Newland Chase global account work currently routed to outside referral firms into committed in-house U.S. business; the firm will hand the role warm mobility, HR, and in-house counsel buyers who already trust the brand outside the U.S.
• Mid-Market New-Logo Hunting: Partner with the Chief Revenue Officer on activity-based selling into mid-market multinational employers; the Americas Co-Chairs, Regional Lead, and consulting team will open doors, and the attorney will close.
• QBR & ABR Client Cadence: Run quarterly and annual business reviews with strategic accounts as a consultative partner — not a transactional ticket-taker — and engage corporate counsel, HR, and global mobility leaders as peers.
• Three-Year Revenue Trajectory: Drive the U.S. book toward a $30–$60M three-year revenue target, with the captive Arizona ABS positioned as durable platform infrastructure rather than a one-time conversion event.

Leadership, Partnership, & External Presence

• Co-Chair Partnership: Work in close partnership with the two regional Immigration Co-Chairs (Europe/Americas) on case strategy, client positioning, and slate-level decisions; respect their substantive authority while bringing your own positions to the table without defensiveness.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner with the CHRO on culture and operating cadence, the COO on operations, FP&A on commercial discipline, and the consulting practice lead on consulting-grade engagements; carry institutional weight without defaulting to hierarchy.
• External Brand & Thought Leadership: Represent the practice externally with substance and poise — AILA Workforce Symposium engagement (workforce track), Worldwide ERC, RMC, client-facing enforcement seminars, and publishable rapid-response analysis when the regulatory environment shifts.
• Team Development: Recruit, mentor, and supervise the next attorney(s) and any expanded paralegal team as the practice scales; design the hiring sequence that protects quality through growth and preserves the founding culture of the firm.

Qualifications:

• Juris Doctor (J.D.) from an accredited U.S. law school, in good standing with all bar admissions and a clean disciplinary record.
• Eight or more years of post-bar experience in U.S. employment-based corporate immigration practice, with hands-on, named-attorney-of-record reps across both the nonimmigrant and immigrant categories of the employment-based system.
• Direct command of the full nonimmigrant visa stack — H-1B (cap, cap-exempt, transfers), L-1A and L-1B (including new-office and blanket), O-1A and O-1B, TN, and E-1/E-2/E-3.
• Direct command of the immigrant lifecycle — PERM end-to-end, I-140 across EB-1A/B/C and EB-2 NIW, EB-2 and EB-3, I-485 adjustment of status, and consular processing across the EU, APAC, and LATAM.
• Demonstrated experience serving multinational corporate clients at Fortune 500 / London Stock Exchange–tier scale, engaging mobility leaders, HR executives, and in-house counsel as peer-level buyers.
• Track record of building or rebuilding a practice's operating layer — case management configuration, intake design, paralegal supervision, engagement mechanics, and fee structure — from the ground up.
• Active Arizona bar admission at hire, eligibility for Arizona Supreme Court Rule 34(f) reciprocity from a reciprocal jurisdiction within three to six months, or commitment to sit for the Arizona bar within twelve months of start.
• Direct experience converting warm enterprise pipeline into committed legal work and co-presenting alongside senior commercial leadership in front of sophisticated multinational buyers.
• Demonstrated comfort with the operating rigor and reporting cadence of a private-equity-backed services platform, including investor-driven inquiry and a compressed sponsor timeline.
• High EQ, low-ego operator with the versatility to partner with senior legal practitioners one hour and corporate clients the next; comfortable disagreeing without defecting and able to hold a technical position under pressure.
• Bias to action — willingness to ship an eighty-percent directional answer on a business question quickly while holding one-hundred-percent accuracy on case submissions.
• Authentic engagement with the corporate immigration community — AILA Workforce Symposium (workforce track), Worldwide ERC, RMC, or equivalent professional bodies.
• Willingness to relocate to Arizona or operate hybrid from a major U.S. metro with substantial travel to Phoenix and Houston; comfort with international travel for client engagement and association presence.

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 is launching 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 U.S. Immigration Practice Lead Attorney will author the practice from a blank page: standing up the legal infrastructure, converting partner-referred U.S. inbound work into committed in-house revenue, and scaling the book toward a $30–$60M three-year target. The founding-counsel seat carries CEO line-of-sight, board-level visibility, and the autonomy of an entrepreneur operating inside a platform with global reach. For the right candidate, it offers the rare opportunity to build a U.S. corporate immigration practice from scratch with the institutional backing of one of the largest names in global mobility.

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