The firm that filed your H-1B extension was chosen by your employer, invoiced to your employer, and instructed by someone in HR you may never have met. That does not automatically make it the company's lawyer alone. In most employment-based filings the attorney represents both the petitioner and the beneficiary, a structure the state bars permit with informed consent, and the practical question for a worker is not whether the arrangement is proper but what it actually entitles you to when something changes. The engagement letter answers that, and almost nobody reads it.
What dual representation actually is
A petition has two parties with mostly aligned interests: the employer wants the worker authorized, the worker wants the same thing, and one set of facts serves both. Conflict rules in every state allow a lawyer to represent two clients in a matter like that if each consents in writing after being told what could go wrong. The consent letter typically says the attorney will share information between the parties, will not keep one side's secrets from the other, and will withdraw from representing one or both if the interests diverge far enough. That last clause is the one worth reading twice, because it tells you what happens on the day the case stops being simple.
Compare that to the alternative most workers assume they have. Sole representation of the employer, with the beneficiary as a non-client whose documents are collected but who is owed no advice, is also lawful and does happen. The difference shows up in small ways: whether the lawyer will answer your email at all, whether you get copied on receipt notices, whether anyone explains what a request for evidence means for your travel plans. Check which arrangement you are in before you need to know.
Where the interests split
Alignment holds until you consider leaving. The moment you start interviewing elsewhere, your questions (how much H-1B time do I have left, can a new employer port my I-140 priority date, what happens to my spouse's work authorization) are questions the lawyer cannot answer for you without telling your employer, because the consent letter you signed says so. Nothing improper occurs. The structure simply does what it said it would do.
The same fault line runs under a downgraded or restructured position, where a title change or a salary adjustment may put the role outside the terms of the approved petition and someone has to decide whether an amended filing is required. It runs under any green card process the employer controls, since the company decides whether to start PERM, when to file the I-140, whether to sponsor at all, and whether to revoke an approval after you resign. The Department of Labor oversees the labor certification side of that process, and its rules attach the recruitment and the certified position to the employer, not to you, which is precisely why the timing decisions are not yours.
What you can ask for a copy of
A careful reader asks for the file while relations are good, not after. As a co-client you can reasonably request the complete filed petition with exhibits, the certified labor condition application, the receipt and approval notices, any request for evidence and the response, the approved I-140, and the PERM application as filed. Ask for these in a single written request and keep them somewhere outside company email. Employers sometimes treat the PERM recruitment file as internal, and the public disclosure file for an LCA is a separate document with its own rules, so expect a conversation rather than an instant transfer. Getting your own copies costs nothing and removes a dependency later.
When separate counsel is worth paying for
An hour of independent advice is cheap next to an unforced error. It earns its fee when you are weighing an offer against remaining H-1B time, when a promotion or a reduction in hours may require an amendment nobody has raised, when a priority date is old enough to be worth protecting, when a job change tests whether the new role is same or similar, and when the employer's counsel has said, politely, that they cannot advise you on the point. Independent counsel does not have to take over the case. Most of the time the useful engagement is a consultation and a written summary, with the company's firm continuing to file.
The arrangement works well for the ordinary run of filings, and it is not a trap. It is a set of terms, agreed in writing, that quietly decide who gets told what. Read them at the start, keep your own copies as you go, and you will know exactly which questions to take somewhere else.