It is usually cheaper than the alternative. A documented analysis of prior time and time spent abroad tells the employer how long an assignment can realistically last, which affects whether the transfer is worth making at all. Government filing amounts are published in the USCIS fee schedule and are separate from professional fees.
Pay for the arithmetic before paying for the petition
The costs in a case like this fall into three groups. There is the professional time to reconstruct and analyse prior status, which is the item most often skipped. There are the government charges associated with the petition itself, which change periodically and should be read from the current published fee schedule rather than from an older summary. And there is the internal cost to the employer of preparing corporate evidence — ownership documents, financial statements, organizational charts — which is real even though nobody invoices for it. Ask an adviser to quote the analysis separately from the filing, so that a discouraging answer can be received without having already paid for work that will not be used.
Ask the business to cost the evidence project as well as the filing. Ownership records, payroll history, role descriptions, and prior travel documents may come from separate teams, each with different retention practices. A preliminary review can show whether a shorter assignment is the only realistic option before the company pays for a full petition. L-1A usually rests on twelve continuous months abroad with a qualifying organization in the prior three years, and the category stops at seven years overall. Hypothetical example: A commercial-roofing group has an executive whose old payroll records sit with a company it acquired. Paying for retrieval early may settle eligibility before the business commits to relocation costs.