Every U.S. work visa is a legal argument, and it is still built by hand.
The firm builds a brief
An attorney argues, with exhibits, that the person meets each legal criterion for the visa: H-1B, O-1, L-1, EB-1, NIW and others.
The government decides
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that adjudicates every employment petition, reviews the file.
Or it asks for more
A Request for Evidence lists every weakness USCIS found. The firm gets one written response before a denial.
Sources: USCIS I-129 RFE data, FY2025. Question count from the existing Visas.ai platform (18,781 questions across 137 visa types). Fee range from published firm pricing.
Generic AI writes fluent drafts. Immigration needs correct ones.
Every claim sits beside the authority it relies on.
Adds a citation link. The attorney still has to open it and check that it says what the draft claims.
Shows the quoted text, checks that it supports the claim, and flags any claim it cannot verify before the attorney signs.
Research corpus: federal regulations, the USCIS Policy Manual, AAO appeal decisions, case law, and 30 years of Velie Law filings.
40+ RFE responses filed for real clients. Every one approved.
Closed beta, 2026. Baseline from USCIS FY2025 I-129 RFE data.
Now the same engine writes the petition, so weaknesses are fixed before filing.
Documents first
Ovie, our AI case partner, reads the CV, papers and letters instead of sending 2,000 questions.
Fact sheet
Every fact carries its source file and page.
Strategy
The attorney chooses which criteria to argue. Ovie suggests; it never decides.
Brief
Drafted criterion by criterion, with exhibits, and verified like an RFE response.
File, track, respond
Forms, exhibits and USCIS status. If an RFE arrives, it opens on the same case with everything loaded.
One workspace for the attorney, the client and the employer.
Product designs for the platform release. The RFE drafting engine is in use today.
Scrutiny is rising, and AI can finally do this work when it is checked.
61,505 RFEs across 572,582 decisions. H-1B alone: 35,155.
Higher bar, same headcount
Every RFE is unplanned attorney work on a deadline. Firms cannot hire their way out.
Models can now reason over a full record
Long-context models can read a whole case file. Verification is what makes the output safe to sign.
Source: USCIS I-129 RFE data, FY2025.
Harvey is broad. We win immigration on outcomes and verification.
| Visas.AI | Harvey, Legora (horizontal legal AI) | Parley, VisaLaw.AI (immigration AI) | Docketwise, INSZoom (case management) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built for immigration | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Each claim checked against the source text | Yes | Citations only | Citations only | No |
| Strategy informed by 30 years of filed cases | Yes | No | No | No |
| Petition and RFE response on one case | Yes | No | Partial | Forms only |
| Client and employer portals | Yes | No | No | Yes |
USCIS does not publish which arguments win. That record lives in a firm's case files, and Velie Law's go back to 1993. Competitor capabilities from public product information, October 2026.
Win immigration first: a $255M market.
| Employment-based cases | Cases a year | Price per case | Annual market |
|---|---|---|---|
| H-1Binitial, extension and transfer | 410K | $149 to $249 | $73M |
| O-1, EB-1, NIWextraordinary ability and national interest | 136K | $499 to $599 | $75M |
| PERM and I-140green card through the employer | 220K | $199 to $249 | $50M |
| L-1, E-1/E-2, TNtransfers, investors, treaty | 125K | $149 to $499 | $39M |
| I-485adjustment of status | 130K | $149 | $19M |
| Total addressable market | 1.02M | ~$250 | $255M |
Per-case software price, about 5 to 10% of the attorney's fee.
The same engine for other bodies of law: 1M U.S. attorneys at $5,000 a year.
Case counts are estimates from USCIS and DOL volumes. Prices are our proposed per-case list prices; net of volume discounts the immigration market is about $196M. For context, U.S. immigration legal services bill $10.6B a year (IBISWorld).
Priced per case, at a small share of what the firm charges.
Per case, by visa type.
- $149 for routine renewals
- $249 for H-1B, L-1 and PERM
- $599 for O-1 and EB-1
Per response, or a monthly plan.
- Starter $349 a month
- Pro $999 a month
- Enterprise $2,999 a month
"Send us your hardest live RFE." We return a draft in two days.
- Then a paid pilot on the firm's own cases
- Then an annual contract
Land with RFEs. Expand to every petition.
Win them with RFE responses: the hardest live RFE, drafted in 48 hours. Velie Law pilots petition briefs.
RFE customers move their petition work onto the platform, starting with the most brief-heavy visas.
General availability. High-volume H-1B and L-1 work, plus corporate immigration teams.
Pilot the same engine with firms in other agency-facing practice areas.
Targets come from DOL filing data: 906 firms ranked by volume, 37 in the first wave. Outreach runs through Jon Velie's network and AILA chapters.
Immigration law veterans and AI engineers.
- Immigration attorney since 1993
- Member, U.S. Supreme Court Bar
- ABA and Stevie Award winner
- Bestselling author on immigration law
- CS lecturer at UC Berkeley, UC Davis and UC Riverside
- Built CourseAssist AI (SIGCSE 2024)
- Founding engineer at Radiance Commerce (acquired by Bloomreach)
- 20+ years in growth, operations and finance
- Fortune 250 and startup leadership
- UT Austin economics
- Product and growth across insurtech, adtech and AI software
- CS at Columbia
- User-facing agentic AI systems and core product infrastructure
Velie Law is our design partner and first pilot firm.
What the $2M buys, quarter by quarter.
Cumulative operating spend from our financial model. Revenue offsets part of it, so peak cash need is about $0.6M. The model counts RFE revenue only; per-case petition revenue is upside.
$2,000,000 seed.
24 months to $1M+ ARR and operating profit.
Use of funds, 24 months
What it buys
Team costs include 15% payroll taxes and benefits. Shares of the $2M: 51% engineering and design, 16% sales and customer ops, 4% AI and cloud, 29% growth and reserve.