Discuss filing readiness after mapping the actual foreign employment history and the proposed US duties. A transfer plan can include future responsibilities, but must support the applicable requirements at filing. New-office rules require a separate analysis. Counsel should identify the evidence milestone needed before committing to a filing or travel date.
Work backwards from the accurate description
Set dates for the successor's start, the point at which they hold the duty unsupervised, and the review of the organizational description. Only then discuss travel. Qualifying employment abroad is generally measured as one continuous year within the relevant preceding three-year period, and how that is counted in an individual history is a question for counsel.
Keep client commitments and housing decisions behind these milestones. Where the receiving business is newly established, a further condition applies: a new-office L-1A approval is generally granted for one year initially, and the extension is assessed on what the office actually became. That turns the first year into an evidence period with its own milestones — premises, payroll, and the organizational structure described at filing — rather than a settling-in period.
Hypothetical example: a dairy co-operative's director opens a small U.S. office and diarises quarterly checkpoints against the staffing plan as filed, so the extension request is assembled from records made at the time instead of reconstructed under deadline pressure a year later.