L-1 Visas and Corporate Speak

October 9, 2021

The Economist recently published an article entitled “Jargon Abhors a vacuum – The reason behind management gobbledygook” which poked fun at “corporate speak”. In the context of L-1 petitions (the category created for intra-company transferees), the article struck a chord. The challenge in this category is to distill the essence of a worker’s role/duties to something understandable and digestible by a regular person. If the employee is the CEO of a big company, not much explanation is needed. On the other hand, if the employee is a middle-manager whose job duties/seniority are not deducible from their title, it can be more challenging. The Economist article specifically picks on the word “solutions”, though “strategy” and “synergy” are equally guilty. It’s not difficult to imagine the eyes of an adjudicator glazing over when reading about how a “Senior Strategy Manager” is responsible for “reinforcing internal synergies” and “in-depth analysis of core strategic functionalities”, especially when the duties are further described with phrases such as “leveraging team collateral” and “engaging with internal stakeholders to maximize operational efficiency”.

The challenge for an attorney assisting companies is to help the client to translate corporate-speak into natural language. While it may not sound as impressive, “managing a team that creates powerpoint presentations for use at pitch meetings” is much more useful than “Engaging with team members to prepare collateral for client solutions meetings”. Adjudicators are fond of pushing back by calling out how corporate speak, and simplifying things from the outset can avoid unnecessarily pushback and delay.