Start with the L-1B eligibility and application overview
Ask the employer what is proprietary
Specialized knowledge for L-1B means special knowledge of the company's product, service, research, equipment, techniques or management, or an advanced level of knowledge of the company's processes and procedures. The first question for the logistics company is: what in the excursion procedure is ours? If the answer is the decision tree, the release thresholds tied to specific customer contracts, the integration with the warehouse system and the escalation matrix, that is company-specific. If the answer is 'we follow the industry guideline', the case is weak. Write the answer down before the petition is drafted.
Ask who else has the knowledge
Knowledge need not be unique in the world, but the petition must show why this employee, rather than a competent hire at the US site, is needed. Ask how many people in the company can run a full excursion investigation without supervision, how long it took the specialist to acquire the knowledge, whether she authored or revised the procedure, and whether she trains others. A specialist who is one of two people able to sign a release, and who wrote the current revision, is a different case from one of fifteen trained operators.
Ask what the US assignment requires
The US duties must depend on the knowledge. If the acquired distribution centre has no excursion procedure and the assignment is to implement the company's method, integrate it with the site's systems and train the local team, the connection is direct. If the assignment is a general operations role where the procedure is incidental, the connection is weak. Ask for the implementation plan, the training schedule and the site's current gap, and let those documents shape the duties description.
Confirm the relationship, the year and the site control
The US distribution centre must be a subsidiary, affiliate, branch or parent of the Canadian company, both actively doing business. The specialist must have one continuous year of qualifying employment with the Canadian entity within the last three. If any work will be performed at a customer's facility, confirm that the petitioner retains control and supervision and that the work is not labour for hire; placing the specialist inside a retailer's warehouse under the retailer's direction is the arrangement the statute prohibits. L-1B status can be held for a maximum of five years. For the foreign-employment period, start with payroll, contracts, time records and personnel files rather than a manager's recollection. The review should identify the exact start date, any interruption, and the entity that employed the specialist, then align those facts with the petition date. The same file should state whether the proposed stay will consume time already spent in L classification, because the five-year maximum is cumulative rather than a new allowance for each employer.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.