Making patent work affordable

Brian recently audited patent law firm invoices for a client over a 12 month period. The audit focused exclusively on costs of patent drafting and prosecution. These invoices indicated that associate patent attorneys at the firm billed the client at an average of $247/hr and the senior partners billed at $430/hour for these services.

The associate patent attorneys at this law firm typically had 2-5 years post law school experience and rarely any experience in industry. As typically happens, the law firm spread these associates across a number of clients to gain experience. In time, a small portion of these associates will be able to stay to become partners at the firms. However, most associates will leave the firm after a couple of years for opportunities elsewhere. Since the client almost always stays with the firm, the client eventually absorbs the costly venture of training in a new associate on their technology.

Assuming the patent drafting and prosecution work was transferred from the young associates to Brian, the analysis was able to illustrate that utilizing Brian for the patent drafting and prosecution services would save the client roughly $250,000/year plus savings from ongoing costs of training in the new associates.