When a company is hiring an attorney, they are typically meeting prospects in person. So how do you hire an attorney, especially if they are not right in front of you? Businesses and individuals choose OnlineVisas for four simple reasons: our strategy, briefs, technology, and success rate.
We've developed something that has radically changed the practice of law, in particular, immigration law. We continue to evolve our platform to meet the changing immigration landscape and growing demand.
David Kelso: Hi there, I'm Dave Kelso. I'm your host for OnlineVisas.com, The Immigration Show and here today with me is CEO of OnlineVisas.com, Mr. Jon Velie. Jon, how are you, sir?
Jon Velie: I'm great, Dave. How are you?
David Kelso: I'm very, very well. Nice to be sitting here with you today. Business visas, businesses and their visas. I know that OnlineVisas has a very successful relationship with a lot of visas, but what I want to know is why do companies use OnlineVisas for processing the H1B, the L1, the O1, the P1, and Green Cards and other business visas? Why do they come to you?
Jon Velie: Four reasons. They come to us because of strategy, our briefing system, technology and our success rate.
David Kelso: Let's get into some of those, because your success rate, I've read recently, is something to brag about, but hold on. Let's get through some of this first. Why is OnlineVisas' strategy process so much better? You said strategy, let's strategize a little.
Jon Velie: Okay. What we do is when someone's hiring an attorney. A company is hiring an attorney, they are looking at attorneys. We're selling the invisible, as they say. How do you hire an attorney especially if they are not right in front of you or you're going into their office? We have clients all over the country, all over the world.
David Kelso: And you don't get to meet with all of them, shake hands, so you have to make relationships in other ways..
Jon Velie: We do. And so those strategy sessions are critical. What we do is we will break down how a company processes immigration cases and what their pain points have been. Maybe they are getting a lot of their visas denied, extra RFEs, all sorts of problems.
David Kelso: Remind me what RFE stands for.
Jon Velie: Request for Evidence.
David Kelso: Okay.
Jon Velie: Those are up right now and this is really the toughest time Immigration has ever had. The strategy session can go at a macro level, how businesses do immigration in general or a micro level, should I hire this person? How do we get a visa for this particular person? With our strategy sessions, we're essentially investing in our clients first by telling them how we would get a visa for them. It is critical to know that going in. A lot of other attorneys would say, "Pay me a lot of money and then I'll tell you whether or not you can get it."
David Kelso: Sure.
Jon Velie: And then that leaves a bad taste. So we invest first and that's what gets us companies. That's where our strategy comes in.
David Kelso: The briefing process. You and I have talked a lot about the briefing process and if you walk around the halls here at OnlineVisas.com, there's a lot of these on the wall and they look really, really cool. Tell me about the OnlineVisas briefing process, because I think it's really special.
Jon Velie: Right. Most immigration attorneys don't brief. They write cover letters, which is essentially a short statement and a table of contents. And they leave it up for Immigration to interpret the evidence.
David Kelso: But a brief is different than that? Explain to me what a brief is?
Jon Velie: I've litigated. I've litigated three cases to the Supreme Court and a lot of different federal courts and in litigation, you have an opposing counsel –so you can't just leave anything up to a judge or jury. You really have to go into it. What is the leading case law? What are the regulations?
David Kelso: Right.
Jon Velie: That's what a brief does. We brief and when we saw that immigration attorneys didn't really brief when I started this 26 years ago, and as I was litigating at the same time, I'm like, "Look, a lot of lawyers are leaving a lot of what they could be doing on the table. Let's give it to Immigration on a silver plater. Let's make it easy." We identify what the issues are, we answer those issues. That's never been more important than it is today. Right? A lot of cases are being denied at a significant point. H1B visas went from an 88% approval rating in 2016 to a 59% approval rating in 2017 with the change of presidents and their approach to immigration.
Jon Velie: This was a really critical time to come in and look at that. We'd already been briefing, but our briefs became more important. When it's an 88% approval rating, do you really need a brief? Well, today you do and so our briefing process is to create a beautiful document. It looks and reads more like a magazine because no one else was doing it anyway. Why make it look like a legal brief. These adjudicators have stacks of this stuff, let's make it easy.
David Kelso: Let's make something pop out. Let's stand out of the crowd a little bit.
Jon Velie: Yeah. So we put a cover on it, it looks like a magazine. A picture speaks a thousand words, right?
David Kelso: It does.
Jon Velie: A beautiful picture of somebody in their work environment, whether they are a techie, whether they are an athlete, whether they are a CEO, doing what they are doing, that gives credibility.
David Kelso: Yeah, it does.
Jon Velie: But then we tell the story about the individual person. We tell the story about the company, the American company, why they are hiring them. We talk about the industry and the specific job and why the requirements meet it. We do all that upfront. Then we give the law back to them and we talk about each exhibit and how it applies to different regulations. And then we come in with the winning case law and winning arguments, winning strategies and effectiveness, we've collected that sort of stuff. And at OnlineVisas, we collect those things and as part of our process, we share those with our clients.
David Kelso: It sounds like you give the case law, you give the reasons why this particular visa application should be approved, but at the same time, you humanize the applicant. You put a face on it, you put a life around it. So it sounds like it's a total package, a holistic brief.
Jon Velie: It really is and what we always used to say is we do more work than the other attorneys.
David Kelso: Right.
Jon Velie: And we charge by the case. The more work we do on it, the less money we make so it was really a critical thing in our business model to make that efficient. With OnlineVisas, our technology, which this kind of goes into, helps us develop these 25 to 30-page briefs instantaneously.
David Kelso: Right.
Jon Velie: Because the same case, from case one to case two, might be built on say 10 or 12 different elements. There might only be two elements different from case one to case two.
David Kelso: Sure.
Jon Velie: Similar job, same company. We can deliver this incredible product a lot quicker and be able to charge our clients less money.
David Kelso: And you've had some success with it. Let's brag just a little bit. So far in 2019, OnlineVisas.com's success rate for H1B visas is-
Jon Velie: 100%.
David Kelso: That's not bad.
Jon Velie: And we had 95% last year and again, that's against this 59% standard. Here's the reason why-
David Kelso: Is it the brief?
Jon Velie: Well, the brief helps. It is the brief, but what does the brief do? You can't just put any words in there. Words are important. So what we did is work with a big association of tech companies called, ITServe Alliance and we were looking to help find litigation attorneys with the association. What I did, as part of the law and policy committee, was I collected denials from many different lawyers and many different companies. This allowed me to see a big spectrum of how companies were getting their visas denied and we created a framework where we found five major reasons and what their [USCIS] thinking was behind it.
Jon Velie: What happened is, Immigration came out with a memo in 2018, in February, right before the filing of these things, and the memo said here's what we want. What the denials told us was, here's why we're going to deny them. So using that methodology, we changed our brief. We were able to change our brief in a weekend and be able to pump out all of our cases for the April 1st deadline with that new knowledge in it. How to comply with what this Administration wants.
David Kelso: Very quick reaction time.
Jon Velie: Very quick reaction time.
David Kelso: This must be technology-based. AI, robots, Jetsons. What's happening here?
Jon Velie: Not going to give away too much of what's happening, but we have collected winning arguments in addition to the law and the regulations and things like that, and by using our platform we're able to spread that knowledge throughout. Formally throughout our visas and for our network of attorneys that use it as well, and for all of our clients that we're serving.
David Kelso: You've taken the mistakes out of it, you've taken the guesswork out it. We know what works, let's do that.
Jon Velie: Yeah. We're moving towards something even more. We're going to be releasing some more product or evolving our platform as we go. It's an ongoing thing.
David Kelso: Sure.
Jon Velie: But right now, there's nothing like it. I mean, we can do our strategies online with our clients. We can share that strategy through a cloud-based technology, user names and passwords to get in and see where we are. We can share that with multiple stakeholders, which there may be an employee, the manager, the spouse, the CFO.
David Kelso: Sure. Keep everybody in the loop all at the same time.
Jon Velie: It's nice to see what's happening. The HR director who has 50 different cases with us, can look at what's happening in all their different cases and stay on top of it. We think we've really developed something that has essentially evolved the practice of law, in particular, immigration law.
David Kelso: Now, let's say I'm a business, and I want to get a hold of OnlineVisas.com, or I want to talk to you and I want to have a strategy session, or even I'm somebody that wants to bring my business here to the United States. How do I get a hold of OnlineVisas.com, and you in particular?
Jon Velie: The name speaks for itself. Go to-
David Kelso: Start there.
Jon Velie: OnlineVisas.com. Check out our website. We have thousands of people a day going there now. It's a fantastic resource. We have these videos that you and I do there with our webinars and particular videos on every visa. They are all on YouTube as well and some with thousands of viewings. I've got a best-selling book, I'm glad to send out as well. They can do an e-book or have a hard copy.
David Kelso: H1B Visas: Applications and Approval by Jon Velie.
Jon Velie: Look, go to our website, check us out, set up a strategy session. Our phone number is there as well. I think that's the best way to get to us.
David Kelso: We'll have all that information across the bottom of the screen here. Of course, you can follow us on Facebook or on LinkedIn and YouTube, as well. For Jon Velie, CEO of OnlineVisas.com, I'm Dave Kelso, your host of OnlineVisas.com, The Immigration Show. Thanks.
Jon Velie: Take care.