Do not decide from the leave label alone. The actual dates, employment relationship, location and applicable foreign-employment counting rules need review.
Present the whole timeline
Include the period before leave, the absence and the return. Avoid counting every day as qualifying work without analysis or omitting the absence to make the record simpler.
Map foreign employment, leave, and U.S. travel, then assess continuity; the label “parental leave” does not decide eligibility by itself. L-1 eligibility requires a parent, branch, subsidiary, or affiliate relationship and generally one continuous year of full-time employment abroad within the relevant preceding three-year period. The proposed L-1A position must be managerial or executive. A new-office L-1A beneficiary’s qualifying foreign year must itself have been managerial or executive. During the stay, the organization must do business in the United States and another country; however, an initial new-office petitioner need not yet operate in the United States. The common error is counting payroll attachment as proof of qualifying work without showing dates and duties.
Hypothetical example: A Russell farm-equipment distributor wants its operations director to establish a U.S. subsidiary after parental leave. Counsel should examine the director’s full-time foreign service before and after the absence, the leave documents, travel log, and decision-making duties instead of deleting the leave from a timeline. Because this would be a new office, the petition also needs secured physical premises, evidence about the investment and foreign company’s financial ability to remunerate the director and commence business, plus a plan supporting a managerial or executive role within one year.