Review how conditional the funding is and whether the plan meets filing requirements. A new-office approval is limited to one year; an operation that opens late after approval may have less time to establish the facts needed for extension. Counsel should assess funding readiness, the requested dates and the evidence before filing.
Anchor milestones to conditions, not hopes
Write the schedule as a set of conditions: funds released, lease signed, first hires accepted, plan finalised, counsel's review complete. Each becomes a dated checkpoint only when the condition ahead of it is met. Review the whole sequence whenever a condition slips, rather than shifting the end date and leaving the intermediate steps where they were.
A schedule that never re-plans is how a second delay becomes a surprise. Ask counsel one further question before deciding: what evidence would exist at each candidate filing date. Filing early on a conditional term sheet and filing later on executed loan documents are not the same case, and the difference is usually visible on paper.
Set the two versions side by side with the documents each would rely on, then choose between them. The seven-year maximum period of stay for L-1A belongs in that conversation too, because a year spent on an approval that could not be extended is still a year of the maximum, and an organisation expecting to transfer several people over time should understand how the first case uses that clock.