Comment on Big law firms win more patent work

Big law firms win more patent work

The share of intellectual property business at smaller firms dropped, with legal work at firms employing 201 to 500 lawyers falling to a 13 percent market share last year, from 35 percent four years ago. The analysis, called Enterprise Legal Management Trends, is based on examining 4 million law firm invoices processed since 2009, billing corporations a total of $18 billion. The heavyweight law firms, the analysis found, outflanked their smaller rivals by being more adaptable in their billing arrangements and using “flexible staffing, including contract lawyers and assigning work to more junior partners to compete on costs.” The financial stakes for law firms are high enough that the National Law Journal publishes an annual Intellectual Property Hot List to single out the top 20 performers in the specialized legal area. The proliferation of patent challenges — and defenses — has been a boon to law firms, which have had to reshape their business models after the financial crisis. “Big Law isn’t taking this space by brute force, but rather by focusing on right-size staffing on corporate client accounts,” said Kris Satkunas, the report’s principal author and director of CounselLink’s strategic consulting. [...] according to the report, invoices submitted by the largest firms billed less than 1 percent of partner time on patents and other intellectual property litigation, as firms apparently shifted work to lower-level and lower-paid lawyers.

 

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