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Enterprise hacks make headlines daily. These include ransomware, malware, adware, social engineering and DDOS attacks. This should give pause to anyone whose business entails managing and securing confidential information. As an in-house mobility professional, your team is likely working both from home and the office, trying to manage the usual robust workflow of cases. Since you are responsible for employee data, you should think about how to best identify and mitigate risk, protecting your company and its people.
If you run a global mobility program, large or small, you need to ensure your employees’ data is protected. Your immigration provider and their case-management software must meet the highest cybersecurity standards.
For these reasons, choosing the right immigration provider is critical for your company and your personal success. But how do you select the right provider and protect your employees?
If knowledge gaps make immigration-provider selection challenging, BAL’s new brochure offers reassurance. This guide has been crafted by our legal and IT experts, who have compiled 55 RFP questions to ask potential providers. Reading this guide, you will discover how to ask providers about data security issues, including security governance, security awareness training, incident response, international standards such as ISO/IEC 27001, and third-party audits.
Take steps now to choose the right immigration provider that will protect your critical employee data. Download BAL’s comprehensive guide on immigration case-management security, Enterprise Cybersecurity Is Job Security.
To learn more about how you can boost your immigration-program security, please contact cybersecurity@bal.com to schedule a consultation.
Leading immigration law firm elevates client experience with comprehensive, multi-media immigration knowledge platform for HR professionals and foreign nationals
DALLAS – Once again transforming legal technology, Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP (BAL) has created the industry’s first multi-media platform, Advisor, dedicated to helping companies adapt to rapidly changing immigration rules.
With real-time analysis from former government officials and industry experts, Advisor helps companies understand changes in immigration law and navigate complex regulatory and compliance issues. Additionally, Advisor provides industry benchmarking, litigation updates, and resources on compliance obligations.
“There have been over 400 changes in U.S. immigration policy in less than four years,” explains BAL Partner Lynden Melmed. “That will not slow down irrespective of who is president next year. Throw in litigation and increased government enforcement, and it can overwhelm any in-house program. We are thrilled to offer the industry’s first digital platform to help our clients scale and meet those challenges.”
Advisor is an extension of BAL’s award-winning proprietary Cobalt® immigration case-management system and is continuously updated through input from BAL’s 1,200 immigration and knowledge management experts. Available anytime, anywhere, on desktop, tablet or mobile phone, Advisor includes predictive-search, and an intuitive platform for hundreds of easy-to-understand articles, explainer videos and webinars.
“Foreign workers are understandably anxious, and every time the government changes the rules it creates new stresses for them and on in-house immigration programs,” says BAL attorney Steve Plastrik, who helped create Advisor and previously worked for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “Advisor will allow in-house immigration professionals and policy teams to better meet the needs of their leadership teams, business stakeholders, and of course the employees going through the immigration system.”
“Advisor allows us to place our expert immigration knowledge directly in the hands of mobility professionals and the employees they support,” says Katie Stone, Director of BAL’s Knowledge Management team. Diem Ngo, Senior Manager of Knowledge adds, “We’re delighted to be able to deliver our best-in-class knowledge library via an ‘on demand’ platform.”
To receive more information about Advisor, please contact: BALgov@bal.com
About Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP BAL, one of the world’s most recognized corporate immigration law firms, is the Best Lawyers® “Law Firm of the Year” in U.S. Immigration Law for 2019, the Most Diverse Law Firm in America (2020) and the National Law Journal’s Best Law Firm for Women (2019 and 2020) and #1 in its class for the Best Law Firm for Female Attorneys on Law360’s Glass Ceiling Report (2019 and 2020). BAL’s Cobalt® digital immigration services platform won the 2020 CODiE Award for Best Legal Tech Product. The firm is singularly focused on meeting the immigration challenges of corporate clients around the world in ways that make immigration more strategic and enable clients to be more successful. Established in 1980, the firm provides immigration expertise, top-notch information security and leading technology innovation. The firm entered into a strategic alliance with Deloitte UK to create the world’s first global immigration service delivery model. BAL and its leaders are highly ranked in every major legal publication, including Best Lawyers, Chambers, The Legal 500, and Who’s Who Legal.
Media Contact: Emily Albrecht Senior Director — Marketing & Communications ealbrecht@bal.com 469-559-0174
DALLAS – Oct. 26, 2020 – Berry Appleman and Leiden LLP (BAL), one of the world’s leading corporate immigration law firms, is a Tech Titans Award finalist.
Representing the best products, technologies, and services in software, information and business technology in North Texas, Tech Titans recognizes BAL for its proprietary Cobalt® platform as a unique and breakthrough technology in corporate innovation. BAL competed against more than 160 award nominees.
“It is an honor to be recognized as a 2020 TechTitans Award finalist,” said BAL’s Head of Products, Chanille Juneau. “BAL is proud of our technological achievements and our commitment to innovate and create new tools to continually improve our clients’ experience. This recognition is a credit to the relationships we have built with our clients and the hard work our people do every single day.”
BAL’s Cobalt® digital immigration services platform has earned numerous accolades in the legal and tech spaces, including the 2020 CIO 100 Award and the 2020 CODiE Award for Best Legal Tech Product. Cobalt is BAL’s proprietary, second-to-none immigration case management system, providing real-time visibility into clients’ immigration programs in a single platform that enables centralized program management to power companies’ business initiatives. Cobalt offers features such as the industry’s first mobile app, allowing employees to monitor their cases anywhere, anytime. With advanced application of computer vision, employees can upload documents, check case status, view milestones, and send secure messages from their phones. A leader in legal technology, BAL is ahead of its peers in enhancing the client experience through intelligent automation and computer vision technologies.
“BAL is developing truly groundbreaking technology that is transforming and challenging the traditional legal services delivery model,” explains BAL’s CIO, Vince DiMascio. “BAL is taking the leading role in pushing the boundaries of innovation while never losing sight of our mission to make a positive difference in people’s lives.”
About Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP
BAL is one of the world’s most recognized corporate immigration law firms and the Best Lawyers® “Law Firm of the Year” in U.S. Immigration Law (2019), the Most Diverse Law Firm in America (2020) and the Best Law Firm for Women by the National Law Journal (2019 and 2020) and the #1 Law Firm for Female Attorneys in its category by Law360 (2019 and 2020). BAL’s Cobalt® digital immigration services platform earned a 2020 CIO 100 Award and won the 2020 CODiE Award for Best Legal Tech Product.The firm is singularly focused on meeting the immigration challenges of corporate clients around the world in ways that make immigration more strategic and enable clients to be more successful. Established in 1980, the firm provides immigration expertise, top-notch information security and leading technology innovation. The firm entered into a strategic alliance with Deloitte UK to create the world’s first global immigration service delivery model. BAL and its leaders are highly ranked in every major legal publication, including Best Lawyers, Chambers, The Legal 500, and Who’s Who Legal. For more information, please visit: www.bal.com.
About Tech Titans
Tech Titans is the largest technology trade association in Texas, representing a quarter million employees through its 300 member companies. Tech Titans includes a diverse group of technology leaders from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies who collaborate to help innovation thrive in the region. As part of its goals, Tech Titans is active in:
For information, please visit www.techtitans.org.
Leading immigration law firm enhances client experience with Cobalt® UiPath Connectors and new types of RPA
DALLAS – In another first in the legal tech space, Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP (BAL) in partnership with Accelirate delivers first-of-its-kind UiPath connectors, empowering clients to leverage cost-effective automation to perform immigration requests and actions within BAL’s proprietary Cobalt case management software.
“We are very excited to be first to market with our Cobalt connector,” explains Ashley Fleischer, BAL’s Automation Services Manager. “Our clients are able to automate rote tasks in Cobalt, enhance quality, and ultimately work more efficiently.”
BAL collaborated with UiPath and Accelirate, the foremost enterprise robotic process automation (RPA) platform, to create the connectors and scale BAL’s legal services to meet increased client case volumes and turnaround needs. Accelirate, a member of the UiPath Services Network and a Diamond Partner, plays a key role in the firm’s automation initiatives, collaborating with BAL to identify high-volume, time-intensive internal processes to automate. The release of the BAL Cobalt UiPath Connector marks another milestone in the law firm’s use of technology. “This is an industry first for immigration. We love pushing the envelope by building solutions that add value through customer experience, productivity, quality, and speed. BAL leads its industry in technology innovation, and we are proud to partner with them,” said Ahmed Zaidi, Accelirate’s Chief Automation Officer.
“BAL is just the type of innovative organization we are eager to support, and we’re thrilled they’ve adopted our technology to further that innovation with Accelirate,” said Frank Czyz, Vice President, Americas Partners at UiPath. “Our HyperAutomation platform is meant to help companies focus on what they do best—bringing supreme products to market and delighting customers—and BAL is already doing that. As the company continues to digitize its business, we expect their results with our solution will only get better.”
Since 2018, BAL’s Automation & AI Development Center has focused on automating numerous repetitive manual tasks, including finance, reporting, and immigration processes—all with tremendous success. BAL employees are happy to leave the repetitive tasks to the robots and embrace technology as a means to an end: focusing on the human aspects of immigration and making a positive difference in people’s lives. By selectively leveraging automation, BAL’s people are able to focus on giving our clients unparalleled service, strategic analysis, and expert legal advice. Thanks to the connectors, BAL’s clients can adopt these same benefits within their own organizations and for their own internal mobility teams.
“These connectors help our clients—CDOs, CIOs, and Data teams—increase quality, velocity and efficiency in their immigration programs,” said Vince DiMascio, BAL’s CIO. “It is one more way that BAL is adding value to our legal services, enabling clients to hire and retain the best talent in the world, and powering human achievement.”
The BAL Cobalt Connector is currently available on UiPath Connect.
About Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP BAL, one of the world’s most recognized corporate immigration law firms, is the Best Lawyers® “Law Firm of the Year” in U.S. Immigration Law for 2019, the Most Diverse Law Firm in America (2020) and the Best Law Firm for Women (2019 and 2020). BAL’s Cobalt® digital immigration services platform earned a 2020 CIO 100 Award and won the 2020 CODiE Award for Best Legal Tech Product. The firm is singularly focused on meeting the immigration challenges of corporate clients around the world in ways that make immigration more strategic and enable clients to be more successful. Established in 1980, the firm provides immigration expertise, top-notch information security and leading technology innovation. The firm entered into a strategic alliance with Deloitte UK to create the world’s first global immigration service delivery model. BAL and its leaders are highly ranked in every major legal publication, including Best Lawyers, Chambers, The Legal 500, and Who’s Who Legal. See website for details: https://www.bal.com/.
About Accelirate Accelirate Inc. is the largest niche RPA Services provider in the United States and a certified Diamond Delivery Partner of UiPath. Their mission is to help companies accelerate automation using Robotic Process Automation and AI Technologies such as Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Smart OCR. With a focus solely on process automation, they offer a comprehensive set of Implementation Services and Custom Automation Products for Enterprises at all stages of RPA and AI adoption. Accelirate has experience in Enterprise Automation for a variety of industries from Financial and Legal, to Consumer Manufacturing and Retail. With innovations such as their award-winning RPA90X, a 90-Day Automation Accelerator Program, and the first-ever Managed Robotic Operations Center (ROC), to monitor and support deployed automations 24/7, Accelirate is changing the face of Digital Transformation.
DALLAS, May 20, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP (BAL), the leader in immigration law, won the annual SIIA CODiE Award for Best Legal Solution of 2020. The prestigious CODiE Awards recognize companies producing the most innovative businesses technology products across industries, and around the world. BAL won the award for Cobalt®, its industry-leading digital immigration platform.
Cobalt® allows companies to manage and track their immigration cases for their employees across the globe within a single integrated system that provides seamless case tracking, insight, analytics, reporting, status updates and more.
“Cobalt® continues to deliver on its promise and earn accolades from the market and prestigious technology industry publications. BAL is the first immigration law firm to win this award, making it even more notable. While other companies and firms have tried and failed to create similar systems, we successfully built Cobalt® ourselves. The result is one of the industry’s most advanced platforms, customized to meet the needs of our clients and their employees now and in the future,” said BAL’s Managing Partner, Jeremy Fudge.
“It is a huge honor to be recognized by our peers,” said Chanille Juneau, the firm’s Head of Products. “We continue to strive to create products that not only support our legal teams but give our clients the best experience possible. The best software is created when innovative technologists collaborate with subject matter experts. BAL is fortunate enough to have both in-house, allowing our Products team to work alongside immigration law experts on a daily basis to build industry-leading software.”
SIIA President Jeff Joseph congratulated the winners: “The products and services we honor today connect us to colleagues and customers, ensure business practices move forward, provide new insights from data, and create new jobs and market opportunities. They represent the best of high-impact, outcome-focused innovation.”
The CODiE Awards are the industry’s only peer-reviewed awards program. Entries are reviewed and scored by software and business technology experts before members of the Software & Information Industry Association members vote for the finalists. Scores from both rounds are tabulated to select the winners.
About the SIIA CODiE Awards The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries. Forty-three awards were given this year for products and services deployed specifically for B2B software, information and media companies, including the Best Overall Business Technology Product, awarded to the product with the highest scores of both rounds of judging. More information about the Awards is available at: siia.net/CODiE.
Details about the winning products can be found at https://www.siia.net/codie/2020-Winners
Dallas, April 28, 2020 – Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP (BAL) is pleased to introduce an immigration chatbot to help demystify complex legal definitions and immigration concepts.
The chatbot, who goes by the moniker “Ellie,” represents another first as BAL continues to lead the industry in using innovative technology to enhance the client experience. Ellie takes her name from the historic Ellis Island, a gateway to freedom for generations of American immigrants.
“Ellis Island symbolizes the challenges, dreams and complexity surrounding U.S. immigration, and Ellie represents another step in BAL’s mission as a firm to make a positive difference in people’s lives and to power human achievement,” said Edward Rios, a BAL Partner and Innovation Leader who heads the firm’s Boston office.
Ellie is able to field questions about visa categories and other immigration definitions and give simple and straightforward answers to queries, such as “What is a TN visa?” and “How does premium processing work?”
Using natural language processing, a form of artificial intelligence, Ellie can understand everyday speech, so users do not need to have a background in legal terminology or specific search-engine phrases.
“Ellie is yet another innovation we’ve delivered to provide an exceptional experience to our clients. Our chatbot technology enables Ellie to learn, adapt, improve and grow more intelligent with every interaction.” said Vince DiMascio, BAL’s Chief Information Officer. Ellie’s vocabulary and knowledge base will be expanding to encompass answers to more complex questions in the future.
Ellie resides at BAL’s H-1B Electronic Registration Resources Center, which clients can access by logging onto their Cobalt account.
Significant investment in AI and automation maintains BAL’s position as the technology and innovation leader in immigration law
Dallas, April 7, 2020 – Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP (BAL), the leading immigration law firm in the world, will be honored at this year’s CIO 100 Symposium for its work bringing innovative AI and automation technology to the legal industry.
The award recognizes 100 organizations for their achievements in technology innovation. Winners’ initiatives are evaluated by a team of external judges on their use of leading-edge IT practices that produce measurable results. The award is an acknowledged mark of enterprise excellence. CIO recognized BAL for its innovative Intelligent Automation program portfolio, which combines artificial intelligence (AI) — including natural language processing, machine learning, and decision networks — with robotic process automation (RPA) to enhance quality, speed, and client experience.
“This extraordinary honor comes as a result of years of targeted investment in developing next generation technologies,” said Vince DiMascio, BAL’s CIO. “Our firm demands the best tools for our people and our clients, and I’m very proud to say that, thanks to our groundbreaking work in this area, the technical promise of automation is now being realized in a practical way.”
“Our goal is to enable BAL legal teams to focus on the client experience. Automation of certain repetitive administrative and clerical manual tasks allows them to do just that,” explains Edward Rios, BAL Partner and Innovation Leader. “By leveraging RPA to accomplish these processes, both internal and client-facing teams are able to dedicate themselves to higher-value and more client-focused interactions, strengthening the underlying service relationship while also improving operational efficiency. We’re delighted to be celebrated by CIO 100 as an organization that understands how to use the latest technology in innovative ways.”
BAL partnered with UIPath, Accelirate, and Synaptiq to enhance business processes using intelligent automation with the goal of driving productivity, eliminating errors, and allowing legal teams to focus less on mundane tasks and more on their clients.
“The possibilities are endless when it comes to automation; but not all automation is created equal,” says Ashley Fleischer, BAL Automation Project Manager. “That’s why we’ve partnered with the best minds in AI and automation to develop the most effective solutions in the immigration field.”
BAL will be recognized at the CIO 100 Symposium & Awards Ceremony on Aug. 19 at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA.
Copyright © 2020 Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP. All rights reserved. Reprinting or digital redistribution to the public is permitted only with the express written permission of Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP. For inquiries please contact copyright@bal.com.
Cobalt® Earns Prestigious Industry Recognition
Dallas, March 31, 2020 – BAL, one of the world’s leading corporate immigration law firms and a legal tech groundbreaker, today announced that Cobalt® was named a 2020 SIIA CODiE™ Award finalist in the Best Legal Solution category. Finalists represent the best products, technologies, and services in software, information and business technology.
Cobalt is BAL’s proprietary, and second to none, immigration case management system, providing real-time visibility into clients’ immigration programs. Cobalt is a single platform that enables centralized program management to power companies’ business initiatives. With Cobalt, BAL offers features such as the industry’s first mobile app, allowing employees to monitor their cases anywhere, anytime. With advanced application of Optical Character Recognition (OCR), employees can upload documents, check case status, view milestones, and send secure messages from their phones. As a leader in legal technology, BAL and Cobalt are ahead of the curve in enhancing client experience through Robotic Process Automation (RPA), OCR and Computer Vision (CV) technologies.
Acknowledged as the premier awards program for the software and information industries for 35 years, the SIIA CODiE Awards are produced by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software, education, media and digital content industries. Cobalt was honored as one of 150 finalists across the 40 business technology categories.
BAL CIO Vince DiMascio stated, “It is our honor to be recognized as a 2020 CODiE Award finalist. BAL is proud to have the opportunity to represent great clients and support their efforts around the world through an exceptional group of people in both our Legal and Products teams. Working together we can take on bigger and more meaningful challenges as we push ourselves to innovate and accomplish amazing things. This award is a credit to the relationships we keep and the hard work our people do every single day.”
The SIIA CODiE Awards are the industry’s only peer-recognized awards program. Business technology leaders including senior executives, analysts, media, consultants and investors evaluate assigned products during the first-round review. Their scores determine the SIIA CODiE Award finalists which account for 80% of the overall score. SIIA members then vote on the finalist products and the scores from both rounds are tabulated to select the winners. Business Technology category winners will be announced May 18 during an online winner announcement ceremony.
Expansion into Santa Clara offers tech clients on-the-ground support in Silicon Valley
DALLAS, Oct. 17, 2019 – Berry Appleman & Leiden (BAL) LLP, one of the world’s largest immigration law firms, is expanding its presence in the U.S. through the addition of a new office in Santa Clara, the heart of Silicon Valley. BAL is already the fastest growing immigration firm, and this move allows the firm to meet current client needs and further expand its market position as the go-to firm for the tech industry.
Immigration has become increasingly complex and unpredictable at a time of fierce competition for global talent, especially in technology and other cutting-edge industries. It is no longer optional for businesses to have a reliable and effective immigration provider—it is a must. BAL provides on-the-ground capabilities and high-touch services to walk clients through their immigration and mobility challenges.
Last year, BAL enjoyed a breakout year. A first-of-its-kind alliance with Deloitte UK expanded our global capabilities, followed by the opening of a new office in New York City that further broadened our presence in the U.S. and diversified our clientele to financial services and other industries. The year culminated in BAL being named “Immigration Law Firm of the Year” for 2019 by U.S. News & World Report and Best Lawyers.
“We are on an aggressive growth trajectory and this addition puts us in the driver’s seat to transform immigration in the tech world,” said Jeremy Fudge, BAL Managing Partner. “BAL was born nearly four decades ago in San Francisco. Our expansion into Silicon Valley reflects our roots in combining superior expertise with an entrepreneurial spirit, and our commitment to growing with our clients as they face new challenges and embrace new possibilities.”
BAL Partners Carla Tarazi and Frieda Garcia will lead the opening of the new office. Both partners have deep knowledge of Silicon Valley companies and extensive experience managing some of the largest immigration programs in the tech industry, providing preeminent client services with care and compassion.
“This is an exciting opportunity to be at the epicenter of innovation and at the intersection of immigration and technology—two fields that are rapidly changing and reinventing the world,” said Tarazi.
“While BAL has served tech companies for decades, our physical presence in Silicon Valley will enable us to strengthen existing relationships and forge new connections,” said Garcia.
About BAL BAL is singularly focused on meeting the immigration challenges of corporate clients around the world in ways that make immigration more strategic and clients more successful. Established in 1980, the firm provides unmatched immigration expertise, top-notch information security and leading technology innovation such as its Cobalt® digital immigration services platform. In 2018, the firm formed a strategic alliance with Deloitte UK to create the world’s first global immigration service delivery model. BAL and its leaders are highly ranked in every major legal publication, including Best Lawyers, Chambers, The Legal 500, and Who’s Who Legal. See website for details: www.bal.com.