Filing mode, attorney of record, and matter identity

A handful of fields you set at matter creation are the ones that end up printed on the document. Getting them right early saves a cleanup pass later.

Filing mode answers two questions at once on a US matter: who the petitioner is, and whether counsel is on the record. You set it when you create the matter, and it changes what prints on the cover and how the closing signature block reads. There are three modes. Self-petition pro se means the beneficiary is the petitioner and closes in their own name. Self-petition with counsel means the beneficiary is the petitioner but counsel signs the close. Employer petition means the employer is the petitioner and the document carries counsel chrome without the dual-role language.

Not every petition type shows the control. EB-1A and NIW offer all three modes, since those can genuinely be filed by the beneficiary or by an employer. VAWA, asylum, and the T and U visa matters offer the two self-petition modes only. For every other US type, and for all Canadian matters, the control is hidden because the answer is not in question.

If you choose employer petition, the employer legal name is required. Petria uses that name on the petitioner line only in employer mode, and only when it is not the same string as counsel. On the two self-petition modes, the petitioner line is always the beneficiary, even if an employer name happens to be stored on the matter. This is on purpose, because a stray employer field should never quietly become the petitioner.

The attorney of record is resolved in order. A value you set on the matter wins. Failing that, Petria uses your firm's default attorney of record from firm settings. Failing that, it uses the person who created the matter if their role is attorney or admin. If none of those produce a name, the deliverable uses a placeholder rather than inventing one, which is your signal to fill it in.

One substantive effect worth knowing: the dual-role and own-behalf paragraphs that belong in a self-petition only appear in the self-petition modes. Choosing employer mode on a matter that is really a self-petition will quietly drop language you wanted, so set the mode correctly at creation rather than fixing the document afterward.

Two more identity fields matter just as much. The beneficiary name is used as it appears on the petition, including the title, so Petria asks for a leading Dr., Prof., Mr., Ms., or similar. The field of expertise is used in the deliverables as written. Both flow into the cover page and the running chrome of the draft, so avoid placeholder spellings you would not file. Each matter also gets a matter reference in a petition-code plus number format, for example NIW-00463. The reference and the beneficiary name together form the display label in the workspace and the base of every deliverable file name. If you replace the generated reference with your own firm convention, that convention is what your associates see in their downloads folder.

Exhibit labels and descriptions do the same job on the evidence side. The label you set at upload is what citations point at and what the generated exhibit list in the deliverable prints. Exhibits are not fixed once uploaded: relabel when the letter or title does not match your firm's convention, edit the description when it does not say what the exhibit is and which claim it supports, reorder to follow your filing order, and remove duplicates or superseded scans rather than leaving both in the record. Changes take effect on the next job, not retroactively on deliverables already produced. If you rename exhibits after a run, the earlier draft still cites the earlier labels, so rerun before you rely on the new numbering.

One caution: the beneficiary identity Petria drafts from is settled from your matter fields and the record, and exhibits belonging to someone else will stop a job rather than quietly appear in the draft.