🍁 Happy Thursday! Today's newsletter is 1,021 words, a 4.5-min read. To the many of you who subscribed in the past week—happy to have you here!

👀 Today’s edition is a little different, but we’ll get back into our usual immigration intel topics next week, including…

1. The H-1B cap under ‘Weighted Selection.’
   We’ll map out the 5 most likely scenarios for next year’s lottery and simulate each using our exclusive analysis of registration, selection, and prevailing wage level data. This is also the topic of our Immigration Insiders meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 15 with Jonathan Micale—former USCIS Operational Executive and Service Center Director.
   

2. Project Firewall’s likely targets.
   My analysis of the types of employers the Dept. of Labor will target in their ambitious plan to expand audits of LCAs, PERMs, and other components of employer immigration programs.
   

3. The 3 pathways forward for employment-based immigration practitioners in the new market under President Trump
   My take on how practitioners can succeed in the rapidly-changing immigration services market.

1 big thing: Introducing Lawfully Intelligence — real-time USCIS case processing trends for H-1Bs, EB-1As, EB-2 NIWs, and more.

This has been in the works for months. I’ve poured hundreds of hours into it—alongside Joon Ahn, HK Yoon, Matt Gale, Seongju Park, and the rest of the Lawfully team.

I’m so eager—dare I say amped, if you’ll pardon my 90s slang—to finally share this offering with the law firm practitioners and global mobility leaders driving the future of this field and navigating a turbulent immigration policy landscape.

📊 First, what is it? Lawfully Intelligence is a monthly subscription for law firms and global mobility teams. It’s a deep dive into USCIS case processing trends with:

• Dynamic case processing times

• Shifts in approval & RFE rates

• Exclusive analysis from former USCIS executives

Now, here’s exactly what you get in the subscription:

• A full report of real-time USCIS case processing trends for 22 employment-based case types, with expert analysis, delivered to your inbox within 7 business days of the start of each new month.

• Monthly subscriber-only consulting sessions with former USCIS executives and other government immigration policy experts.

• One custom report per month—built for you, by our team, and based on the way that you as a practitioner want to see and understand the data.

⏱️ Why it’s more important than ever to have real-time data: Last night, USCIS released it's official quarterly case processing data covering April - June 2025. Among other trends, the data showed a 6% drop in the average approval rate for EB-1A I-140s compared to January - March.

But the problem with this data is it's too little, too late. With the rate of change in immigration policy under the Trump administration, a 3-6 month lag in understanding case processing trends is too long for practitioners to adjust their strategies proactively.

You'll miss key trends while they're happening under your nose. USCIS won't publish case data for July, August, and September until December 30th at the earliest—and October data won't be available until March 30, 2026.

Information sharing amongst practitioners is a helpful and important way to stay informed on trends—but with the future of your clients or your company's global mobility program on the line, you can't rely on hearsay alone to make strategic decisions.

That's why if you've been following our work, you'll have been aware of this EB-1A approval rate decrease months ago.

And if you continue to follow us now, you'll know that the decrease reported by USCIS has only continued through July, August, and September.

We were first on this trend because we maintain the largest and most diverse dataset of real-time USCIS case processing trends—powered by the 6 million individual immigration cases tracked through our mobile app.

As an example, that enables us to track 15-20% of all I-140 cases for EB-1A and EB-2 NIW that are reviewed by USCIS each month.

But our data goes deeper than that—and much deeper than what USCIS makes public.

Ever wonder what the disparity is in approval and RFE rates for premium processed cases vs. regular processed?

We track that. And we track—at scale—what petitions are being reviewed in a given month (in real-time) based on receipt dates.

With EB-1A for example, our data shows that the majority of the regular processed 140s that were denied in April - June were filed during the Biden administration.

That’s the difference real-time data makes. It allows you to:

1. More accurately set and update client expectations based on changes in monthly approval rates, RFE rates, and processing times.

2. Inform filing and sponsorship strategy based on real-time trends in approval rates, RFE rates, premium vs. non-premium splits, and shifts in processing times.

Finally, here’s how to get your eyes on this data: If you want to see what’s really happening before USCIS makes it public months later, reach me at [email protected] or DM me on LinkedIn.

We’ll book a quick call, I'll show you a detailed preview of the full October report, and answer any questions you have.

Then if you're interested in moving forward, we can get you signed up within a few minutes!

Final thoughts: For global mobility teams and immigration firms, this is a chance to be first in line—not just to gain sharper intelligence on case processing, but to help shape this offering into something even more valuable for you as a practitioner.

One of the things that drew me to Lawfully is how instinctively our entire team listens to customer feedback and builds around their needs.

As robust as this offering already is, it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

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📩 That’s it for this week! I want to hear your feedback and questions, so drop me a note anytime at [email protected].

See you next week!