Matt co-founded Meltzer Hellrung in 2014 with his business partner, Matthew Hellrung. Their vision was to combine exceptional, strategic, and programmatic legal guidance with best-in-class technology to provide a service that makes immigration management easier for companies and more transparent, intuitive, and reassuring for foreign national employees. In addition, Matt continues to strive to build a workplace that treats employees with dignity and invests in their long-term success.
Matt’s clients range from entrepreneurs to small and growth-phase companies to multinational corporations. In his practice, he has built up a specialty working with emerging companies, including entrepreneurs, foreign companies entering the US market, and high-growth venture backed companies. Matt works closely with clients to help them assess immediate legal needs and build strategies that scale with continued growth.
Matt advises companies regarding employee hiring and I-9 compliance, immigration policy, reorganizations and mergers, global immigration and expansion, and government inspections.
Matt has used a complete spectrum of immigration tools to help clients achieve their goals. Examples of Matt’s creative successes include:
- Pursuing a Schedule A Exceptional Ability green card for a talented individual when an EB-1A petition was not successful.
- Advised companies on how to create spin-off services companies for key employees to pursue E-2 visas
- Filed a National Interest Waiver petition for an entrepreneur
- Assisted E-2 entrepreneurs to navigate sales of their companies and maintain their visa status
- Filed an O-1 petition for a sales executive
- Pursued litigation to challenge the Trump administration on its implementation of the International Entrepreneur Rule. After a Federal Judge found in favor of that client, Matt submitted a parole application on behalf of the co-founder.
- Successfully litigated an egregious H-1B denial for a hardware engineer
- Successfully litigated the rejection of an H-1B cap petition. USCIS eventually accepted review of the petition and approved H-1B status for the beneficiary.
Matt routinely speaks publicly, including through the firm’s webinars, AILA conferences, and TechGC events. In addition, Matt was selected to participate in the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ Emerging Leader Program for 2022-2023. Most recently recognized as one of Crain’s Chicago Business Notable Leaders in Accounting, Consulting & Law!
Matt earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his law degree from Boston College Law School.
More about Matthew
⏰ Wake up time - 6:15am☕️ Number of cups of coffee per day - 1-2
🦸🏻♂️ Most wanted superpower - Speed reading
🐾 Animal most like personality - Penguin
🖌 Favorite hobby - Playing Squash
🎧 Favorite musician - Frank Sinatra
🧳 Next dream travel destination - Japan
🤫 Secret, weird talent - Making homemade lox
⭐️ Next goal or bucket list to do - Opening a Meltzer Hellrung office in another city