EB1-OR and recommendation letter

[EB1OR?]

How important is to get independent letters for EB1-OR?
I am having some trouble getting folks who do not know me writing me letters, My lawyer (company hired) told me today that those letters are not even necessary? is that ture? Unfortunately, the lawyer is always too busy to answer any of my questions.

My situation:
PhD. in organic chemistry from a decent US university.
3 years post-doc. in a top university
one year on my current job in a pharmaceutical company.
13 papers (3 first author, 8 second author (the first is my post-dco boss) and 2 third)
papers have been cited about 60 times.
Sigma xi (just joined in for the purpose of EB1), ACS.
awards in graduate school as students only.


please comments on how to improve my case

[blueone]

In my view, independent letter would strongly help your case. It is like mandatory requirement to support your claim of outstanding contribution to the field. Normally people are busy. Therefore, they care less about your application. The best way to approach them is to ensure them that this will take only 5 mins of their time. In other words, you can provide them with a draft letter and ask them if they could agree with that and sign the letter. Many people are OK with this approach from my experience. However, if you ask them to write from scratch, good luck!

[EB1OR?]

thanks for the response.
Two editors from two journals agree to sign my letters
I have never met any of them, what is the best way to draft the letters myself?
should i focus on my paper in that journal only?

thanks for comments

are there any sample letter, template etc available for this kinds of letters?

[sib_gm]

Independent letters are very important, my lawyer even told me that the letter from people who know you will have very little meaning. Try to get couple of them from outside US. I approached people (some are big) whom I got to know in the conferences however were not associated with me in my research and asked them to give me a reco letter (I drafted them). That worked very well. Some of them are from my country however studied here and working here etc.

Just a clue: sometimes a letter from a person who works in a company (not in your company, but in the same area of research), he may not be a big guy also helps a lot. This will work for you because yours is a petition from industry.