To apply for NIW, you must prepare 7-10 recommendation letters by yourself whether you do your case by yourself or you hire a lawyer to do it for you.
One lawyer has summarized the whole NIW application “一个中心, 两个基本点”, that is, “以国家利益为中心, 以推荐信 和申请信为两个基本点”. Although both recommendation letters and petition letter are equally important to your cases, the recommendation letters, I think, are more important than petition letter since the composition of petition letter is heavily dependent on the recommendation letters in addition to your strong background. Without good recommendation letters, you or your lawyer will not be able to prepare a good petition letter.
So what is a good recommendation letter? I came up with the following three criteria: 1) whether your letter has covered the impacts of your work/research on national interest or not; 2) whether your letter has covered the impacts of your work or research on other researchers’ work or not; 3) whether your letter has covered the description of your key role in your current work/research and how the national interest will be affected if you were asked to go through LC. If your recommendation letters just list the scientific achievements you have made, then your letters may be good for your job applications but absolutely not good for immigration officers.
After analyzing most RFE notices in this forum, I found most of RFEs resulted from poor recommendation letters, and subsequently the poor petition letters. The two common problems are: 1) petitioners failed to demonstrate they are superior to their peers in their areas due to improperly descriptions or no descriptions of their work/research on other researchers’ work and to improperly descriptions of their own achievements such as awards and professional membership etc.; 2) petitioners failed to demonstrate the impacts of their work/research on the national interest, and how the national interest will be affected if going through LC, therefore not convincingly to establish NIW.
Therefore, to get a good NIW package is very important for those who have no experience with NIW at all but want to do it by themselves. A lawyer may be helpful in preparing your good petition letters only if you can prepare good recommendation letters in addition to your proper background.
The above three criteria for how to assess whether recommendation letters are good or not are just based my understanding of the requirements for NIW application. Just for your reference. Very welcome to discuss or present your own opinions. Good luck to all those who are still struggling for their NIW applications.