McDermott Will & Schulte, a global law firm

Joan-Elisse Carpentier provides legal representation in all areas of immigration and nationality law affecting individuals, corporations and other businesses. She has worked on evaluations of immigration practices of corporations, development of corporate policies and procedures for handling immigration matters and obtaining immigrant and non-immigrant visas, as well as citizenship and expatriation. Joan-Elisse assists businesses with I-9 compliance programs and provides representation during government audits and in settlement negotiations. She also provides advice concerning immigration issues during mergers and acquisitions.

Joan-Elisse represents clients in a wide variety of industries, including finance and banking, publishing, entertainment, broadcasting, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, manufacturing, technology, hospitality and energy. She works with entrepreneurs developing US businesses, and also works on behalf of US citizens and foreign nationals to obtain visas for other countries.

Joan-Elisse has written and lectured on business immigration topics for many different audiences. She has written articles on foreign hiring for Human Resource Executive Immigration Advisor and Management News, and was recently interviewed for Realtor magazine regarding EB5 foreign investments in real estate projects. Her article on employer sanctions and I-9 compliance was recently published in Bloomberg BNA - Workplace Immigration Report. She has been a featured speaker at human resources conferences and meetings sponsored by a number of clients. Joan-Elisse was a guest lecturer in 2012 and 2014 for Northwestern University School of Law's Tax LLM Program for the International Estate Planning course. She was a featured panelist on diversity at the American Immigration Lawyers Association New York Chapter Winter Conference and participated as a roundtable speaker on practices and pitfalls of remote work for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Leigh-Alexandra Basha focuses her practice on domestic and international tax and estate planning. She counsels an affluent international client base on a wide range of sophisticated matters, including estate and trust administration, family wealth preservation, foreign trust planning, tax compliance, as well as business succession, expatriation, and pre-immigration planning. Leigh is head of the firm’s Washington, DC, Private Client Practice Group.

Leigh was an adjunct professor of wills, trusts and estates at American University Washington College of Law. She lectures and has written extensively about international tax and estate planning issues, and is editor of A Guide to International Estate Planning: Drafting, Compliance, and Administration Strategies, Second Edition.