Melissa G. Nolan

Melissa Nolan’s primary practice areas are immigration and estate planning and tax planning.

Ms. Nolan’s immigration practice includes both employment-based and family-based cases. With respect to employment-based immigration cases, Ms. Nolan represents individual employees as well as employers of all sizes, from small, closely-held companies to large, multinational companies. She represents companies in a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, information technology, hospitality, international sales, arts, entertainment, and education. She assists companies to file petitions for labor certification. Ms. Nolan is known for her work with universities and their researchers and professors to obtain temporary and permanent immigration status in the U.S., as well as scientists, artists, athletes, and other extraordinarily talented individuals petitioning for immigration status based upon their accomplishments and recognition.

With respect to her family-based immigration practice, Ms. Nolan represents U.S. citizens seeking to sponsor their foreign national relatives for lawful immigration status in the U.S., married couples applying to remove the conditions on lawful permanent residency, and applications for waivers of the joint filing requirement by conditional lawful permanent residents. She helps clients obtain adjustment of status within the U.S., and apply for immigrant visas abroad through the consular process.

As the final step in the immigration process, Ms. Nolan assists both employment-based and family-based clients with the naturalization process, when the individual desires to become a U.S. citizen.

Ms. Nolan’s immigration practice includes providing assistance to foreign entrepreneurs to obtain immigration status based upon their investment in a U.S. company.

Ms. Nolan’s estate and tax planning practice includes the preparation of estate planning documents such as wills, revocable trusts, powers of attorney, and health care declarations. In addition, she assists clients with designing and implementing planned gifting strategies, and estate tax minimization strategies, including irrevocable trusts and life insurance planning. Ms. Nolan works with her clients to design individualized estate plans with the goal of providing certainty and comfort for the clients and their families, while incorporating strategies to avoid probate, minimize estate tax, and establish clarity about the clients’ wishes.

Ms. Nolan has been named a Rising Star in the field of immigration law by Missouri & Kansas Super Lawyers for several years. She was a member of Washington University’s Institutional Review Board, and served as an adjunct professor at the Washington University School of Law, teaching a course titled Representation of Non-US Citizens in Immigration Court Proceedings, which she co-created.

Along with Paule, Camazine & Blumenthal attorney Alisse Camazine and former colleague Pete Gianino, Ms. Nolan is a co-author of a Missouri Bar Guidebook titled “Divorce and Immigration,” which supplements the Missouri Bar Family Law Deskbook. Ms. Nolan co-authored an appendix to the 2nd edition of Ms. Camazine and Alan Freed’s book titled Divorce in Missouri. In addition, Ms. Nolan has presented the following seminars:

• “Alternatives to the H-1B Visa” [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]
• “Essential Immigration Issues for Non-immigration Attorneys” CLE [nationwide seminar]
• “Immigration, Taxation and Business” [Missouri Bar Association]
• Presentations to International students at universities throughout Missouri and Illinois
• Presentation at the Corporate Counsel Institute, co-sponsored by the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis and the Association of Corporate Counsel St. Louis Chapter
• Presentation at the International Education Consortium
• “Deportation/Removal Defense” CLE [nationwide seminar]
• “Immigration Law and Family Law Collide” [St. Louis County Bar Association]
• Presentation to MBA Career Services Council Annual Conference – Keystone, CO
• “Immigration and Divorce” [Annual meeting of National Association for Legal Professions]
• “Strategies for Responding to I-9 Audits and Inspection Notices” [nationwide teleconference, NBI, November 2012]
• Presentations to law firms throughout the St. Area advising them about a variety of immigration issues

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