"Liz is a brand name in this business and is clearly a top player."
Chambers USA

Aperçu

Elizabeth Espín Stern, managing partner of Mayer Brown's Washington DC office and a former member of the firm’s Partnership Board, leads Mayer Brown’s Global Mobility & Migration practice, within the Employment & Benefits group. She is a seasoned veteran who has advised companies through every major immigration policy change since 1986. Liz is consistently ranked as a leading business immigration lawyer by Chambers Global, Chambers USA, Who's Who Legal, The International Who's Who of Business Lawyers, and national and local publications. She is in Legal 500’s “Hall of Fame” for Immigration (2020-2022) as well as Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers and a recipient of the National Law Journal’s Immigration Trailblazer award (2018) and its Crisis Leadership Trailblazer award (2020). Liz has been recognized by Corporate Counsel’s 2021 Women, Influence & Power in Law Awards for “Innovative Leadership,” awarded Washingtonian’s “Lawyer Lifetime Achievement” for Immigration, named as one of the “Top 10 Most Innovative Legal Practitioners” by the Financial Times (2020) and received the “Women Who Mean Business” award from the Washington Business Journal." She has also been named a Mayer Brown Diversity Champion.

Liz spearheads Mayer Brown's market-leading global worksite management initiative, the Global People Solution™, which offers multinational clients a comprehensive compliance and management program in connection with their mobile workforce. Leveraging a proprietary 10XMOBILITY™ technology that provides clients with a one-stop portal for case tracking, compliance recordkeeping and global know-how, the Global People Solution™ combines best practices in compliance standards, controls and audit preparedness with agile management of visa portfolios and extraordinary solutions for senior executives.

Liz regularly speaks and writes about immigration policies, talent optimization, and diversity, equity and inclusion, and contributes to major news agencies and publications.

Liz focuses on issues that are unique to dynamic commercial entities with a global work force. She helps companies establish global compliance and management programs to move their executive and professional work corps to various locations around the world. Liz is knowledgeable in global HR disciplines and transactions, including visas, work permits and compliance and how immigration transactions interface with tax, employment, compensation and benefits, corporate formation, DE&I, data privacy, export controls, and anti-corruption and anti-bribery regulation.

Langues

  • Espagnol

Expérience

  • Advising multiple companies on best practices to establish a managed services program to oversee the hiring and mobility of talent across borders, the required employment, benefits and immigration processes to optimize the program and the impact of export control, FCPA, and data protection regulations on their immigration and mobility programs.
  • Representing the targets of government investigations for immigration compliance, including with regard to visa fraud, vendor management, and identity and work authorization practices.
  • Representing multiple global financial services organizations in reductions in force impacting a substantial percentage of the work force and including the organization's visa holders and residency candidates.
  • Advising a financial services company on the compliance requirements to maintain the visa and work authorization for global workers encompassed by the company’s acquisition of new entities.
  • Developing the strategies for mobility of global pools of professional workers for a global IT company to meet the company’s staffing demands in locations throughout EMEA, Asia Pacific and the Americas.
  • Leading the global team managing a defense supplier's global migration program, coordinating the immigration requirements in multiple countries, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Taiwan and United Kingdom, and securing work authorization for assignees pursuant to government and commercial services agreements.
  • Counseled a government agency on the creation of a training program to facilitate international exchanges with similar entities around the world.
  • Counseled a major transportation corporation on immigration and employment compliance to prepare for its Congressional hearing on a multibillion dollar funding bill.
  • Facilitating the seamless transfer of employees in over 50 countries in the course of a major reorganization involving divestiture and transfer of a major business segment of a FTSE 100 financial services company.
  • Assisting a leading entertainment celebrity to enter the United States in an expedited manner to facilitate filming of a major motion picture during a 5-day production period in New York City.
  • Assisting the CEO of a leading IT company with dual citizenship, US residency and related tax planning, over the course of changes in primary residency to three different countries.

Formation

University of Virginia School of Law, JD

University of Virginia, BA, magna cum laude

Inscription au Barreau

Barreau

  • District of Columbia
  • Virginia

Tribunal

  • US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
  • Supreme Court of Virginia

Affiliations

  • Member of the Board of Advisors, New American Leaders Project (NALP)
  • American Bar Association - Fellow
  • District of Columbia Bar
  • Virginia State Bar Association
  • American Immigration Lawyers Association
  • Society for Human Resource Management
  • United States Chamber of Commerce - Labor & Immigration
  • Atlantic Council
  • Tech America