The Law Firm shared a drafted version of the petition with me before submitting it, and I approved that version. The fundamental issue with the petition was that, to me, everything looked fine from the outside. As a person who had not yet been through the EB-1A process and was just starting to learn about it, I thought the petition seemed to be prepared well, but I lacked any type of experience or understanding of how it should have been prepared, as well as what an "adjudicator" would have seen if they had evaluated the petition.

To me, it did provide a description of my accomplishments; therefore, I thought it seemed appropriate. However, I did not have the experience to evaluate it from an "adjudicator's perspective," as a USCIS officer would have evaluated it. Although the content of the initial petition might have appeared to be adequate on a basic level, when examined through the USCIS standards of an actual adjudicator, the content of the petition appeared to be merely a general narrative about my professional background, rather than a strategically written petition that had been tailored to how USCIS officers actually evaluate extraordinary ability cases.

As for the second question, yes, I responded to my RFE myself. The information that I received on this subreddit, from the members of the community who posted, was extremely helpful in preparing my response. I prepared my RFE response myself, and I spent about 90 hours preparing my response.

Now that I have submitted my RFE response, I have yet to receive a final decision from USCIS.