How Immigration Firms Can Get Ahead of RFEs in 2026

RFEs have always been part of immigration practice. But these days, your firm is likely receiving more RFEs, even for carefully prepared files.

Immigration attorneys nationwide are seeing changes in the RFEs landing on their desks. Greg Siskind, immigration attorney and co-founder of Visalaw AI, sees the change as bigger than volume alone. Attorneys are also dealing with more complicated requests, evidence that appears to have been overlooked, and questions that can be harder to interpret and respond to. That can be especially frustrating after you’ve already put significant care into preparing the case. 

Prevention begins as early as intake, but RFE-ready case preparation demands strong organization throughout the process.

• Consistent intake makes it easier for paralegals to catch discrepancies when they are easier to resolve.
• Better-organized case data makes supporting evidence easier to trace.
• A structured pre-filing review surfaces gaps before the petition reaches USCIS.
• Keeping the original case history readily available helps you understand the request and respond faster if an RFE arrives.

And while the best RFE response is the one you don’t have to write, every legal team should have a response strategy ready when one arrives. Here are a few places to focus your workflow to help prevent RFEs and make the ones that do arrive feel less like an emergency.

Watch Preventing & Preparing RFEs: The Power of eimmigration + Visalaw AI

Make sure evidence is easy to find

Building a strong petition requires the right evidence. How you organize the information also shapes how easily an adjudicator can understand the case.

In a poll of immigration professionals, about 75% of respondents said their firms had encountered RFEs that appeared to ignore evidence already included in the petition. More than half said they were seeing more questions around credentials and supporting documentation.

Think of the petition as a story even an overworked adjudicator will be able to follow. Forms, exhibits, support letters, client information, and legal arguments should create a clear path through the case. Detailed tables of contents and logical exhibit organization can help reviewers connect each claim to its supporting evidence. As USCIS processes more case information digitally, clarity and organization become even more critical.

Catch potential RFE issues at intake

A small intake issue can follow a case much further than you’d expect. When a client enters the wrong date, leaves a gap in their employment history, or forgets to send a document, you may not catch it until forms are underway or the petition reaches an attorney for final review.

A consistent intake process gives you a chance to catch those issues while they’re still easy to fix. Case-specific questionnaires help clients provide the right information from the start, and staff can follow up on anything that looks incomplete or unclear before it becomes part of the case record.

Take an EB-1A case, for example. The petition may ultimately need evidence across several different criteria, but the team has to know what it’s working with first. The right questionnaire can surface a client’s relevant accomplishments and supporting information early enough for the team to identify what needs documentation while the case is still taking shape.

When you know a case type inside and out, it’s easy to carry much of this process in your head. But memory alone gets harder to rely on as your firm grows, staff changes, or work moves between team members. Evidence collection becomes more reliable when you build that process knowledge into your case management workflow.

Add review checkpoints before filing

What does a strong review process look like?

It should give your team ample opportunities to catch issues before a petition reaches USCIS. That might include a paralegal checking incoming information for gaps, a second team member reviewing forms for consistency, or an attorney taking a final look at the case with the legal standard in mind. Or it might include all three.

Whatever review checkpoints you choose, the key is making them part of the workflow. When everyone knows what to review and when, quality control becomes a consistent part of case preparation rather than something squeezed in at the end.

Used thoughtfully, AI can add another layer to that review process. It can review a large case record for inconsistencies, unsupported assertions, missing information, or areas an adjudicator might question. That’s especially useful after you’ve spent hours immersed in a case and a fresh perspective is harder to come by.

The technology surfaces areas worth investigating. Your team still brings the context, experience, and legal judgment to decide what needs attention before filing.

Build the response from the case record

An RFE can land in the middle of an already full caseload with pages to decipher and a tight deadline attached. The first step is to turn it into a clear response plan.

Start by breaking the request into individual issues and mapping each one back to the original petition. Siskind recommends looking at what evidence was already submitted, then determining whether USCIS appears to have overlooked it, discounted it, or found it insufficient. That gives the team a much clearer picture of what actually needs to happen next.

Keeping the response connected to the existing case saves valuable time. When the complete original filing is readily available and visible to every stakeholder, the legal team can move into analysis without reconstructing the case from scratch. They can add new evidence to the record and monitor what still needs attention as the deadline approaches.

AI can also support this process. You can use it to review a dense RFE against the original filing, surface the major issues, and organize the request into a workable structure. Immigration-specific tools can also help with research, initial drafting, and document organization before the response reaches the attorney review stage.

Make RFE readiness a firm-wide skill

Nearly 300 immigration attorneys joined us recently to discuss this topic. We asked what they found most challenging when responding to RFEs at their firms. 33% said managing tight USCIS deadlines with no room for error was the biggest barrier. Another 31% said drafting a clear, persuasive response felt like the most significant obstacle.

An RFE doesn't just slow down one case—it ripples across the whole firm. Attorneys and paralegals have to make room for another deadline. Clients need another round of calls and document requests. And every other case on your desk is still waiting for your attention.

To make those moments easier to manage, build RFE readiness into the way your firm works every day.

Want to see what an RFE-ready process looks like in practice? Get a closer look at how stronger case preparation, thoughtful workflows, and AI can help your team reduce RFE risk and respond more efficiently when one arrives.