Insights

The $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee: When Protecting Jobs Means Pricing Out Startups

In late September 2025, the Trump administration announced a dramatic hike in the fee employers must pay when filing new H-1B visa applications from a range of $2,000-$5,000 up to $100,000 per new application. The increased fee is being called a talent tariff by some startup founders and critics of the new policy generally. Tariffs are the sort of thing you impose on foreign steel, not foreign software engineers. Why is the government doing this?

Alon Y. Kapen

Second Department Ends Sisters’ Fight Over Family Home Not With a Bang, But a Whimper

Four sisters. One house. Who owns it?

Becky (Hyun Jeong) Baek

Undue Influence Objections in Will Contests

When a petitioner offers a will for probate, and the propounded instrument’s validity is contested, objectants oftentimes raise undue influence as an objection to the admission of the will to probate. By alleging undue influence, an objectant essentially contends that the propounded will resulted from another person’s influence on the testator, and, therefore, reflects the wishes of the alleged undue influencer, rather than the testator.

Robert M. Harper

Rules Have Teeth: Discovery Motion Denied Over Noncompliance with Commercial Division Rule 14

As readers of this blog are well aware, we here at New York Commercial Division Practice repeatedly discuss decisions by the Commercial Division emphasizing strict adherence to the Commercial Division Rules. Nowhere is that clearer, and more common, than Commercial Division Rules 14 and 24, which require parties to make a good-faith effort to resolve certain discovery disputes before seeking judicial intervention. A recent decision issued by Manhattan Commercial Division Justice Robert R. Reed sheds light on the consequences of filing a motion in contravention of the requirements under Commercial Division Rule 14.

James R. Maguire