A decade ago, law firms focused on patent filing services and prosecution. But today, that’s just the starting point.
More than paperwork, clients need strategic partners who help them generate, evaluate, and refine ideas, and get more invention disclosures in the first place.
Before patents even come into play!
And with businesses investing heavily in R&D and internal innovation, they’re looking for firms that can:
- streamline invention disclosures,
- facilitate collaboration between inventors and legal teams,
- help build stronger patent portfolios.
So, the firms that evolve beyond patent filing services will become indispensable partners.
This is why the 2024 Investing in Legal Innovation Survey by LexisNexis found that 70% of law firm leaders see GenAI enabling new value-added work products for clients, highlighting the industry’s shift towards innovative solutions.
The question is: Will your firm lead the change? Let’s explore how your firm can deliver more value.
What Clients Actually Want from Their IP Law Firm?
Every company is under immense pressure to innovate while keeping patent costs manageable.
This means they need their employees to become innovators and have a good enough IP knowledge to take it to the commercialization stage.
And here they’re expecting law firms to play the role of strategic partners.
#1 Creating More Innovation Opportunities
Say you are working with a tech company aiming to stay ahead of the innovation adoption curve.
They initiate traditional hackathons or brainstorming sessions to encourage employees to submit new ideas.
But what’s the goal, which problem do they want to solve? How will they evaluate and implement it? What’s the criteria for forwarding ideas to the invention stage? Who will evaluate, legal teams or review committee?
Without structure, these challenges turn into a mess of scattered ideas, untracked submissions, and lost potential.
Here’s where IP law firms can step in and add real value:
- Help companies structure their Innovation Challenges, providing guidance on how to frame problems and incentivize participation.
- Implement idea submission platforms where employees can quickly log their inventions in a centralized, trackable system.
- Set up a clear review workflow, ensuring R&D teams, legal teams, and decision-makers can easily collaborate.
By offering this kind of innovation management support, law firms move beyond just patent filings and become an integral part of a company’s invention pipeline.
The Solution: Deliver More Than Just Patent Filing Services and Help Clients Generate More Invention Disclosures
Most companies struggle with getting enough quality invention disclosures. Your firm can help by:
- Running Innovation Challenges: InspireIP’s Innovation Challenge feature makes it easy to launch company-wide challenges and track submissions.
- AI-Powered Brainstorming with Inventor Assistant: InspireIP’s AI-driven Inventor Assistant helps inventors refine their ideas, leading to stronger disclosures.
- Impact: More invention disclosures = More patents = More business for your firm.
#2 Empowering Inventors with AI Tools
Writing a solid invention disclosure is tough for even a seasoned employee.
Now consider a 2-year in R&D engineer coming up with a novel idea, but not knowing the next steps.
How to refine it into a patent-worthy idea? Or, how to ensure it is in fact novel? How to frame it clearly and what details to include?
Traditionally, they’d either spend hours researching or submit a half-baked disclosure, leaving your legal team to do the heavy lifting.
But what if AI could help them refine their idea before it even reaches the IP team, internally or externally?
Here’s how law firms can deliver real value by offering AI-driven inventor assistance:
- Responsible AI approach to refining ideas: AI brainstorming tools enable inventors to sift through every aspect and build their idea into IP.
- AI-guided disclosure drafting: Platforms that help inventors structure their ideas, ensuring they include key details like technical descriptions, use cases, and novelty factors.
- Automated prior art analysis: AI tools can scan millions of existing patents and research papers, flagging potential overlaps so inventors can strengthen their disclosures.
- Real-time feedback: AI can suggest improvements, helping inventors enhance clarity, avoid common mistakes, and make their submissions patent-ready.
#3 Facilitating Seamless Collaboration
Patent law firms aren’t losing clients because of their bad legal work.
They’re losing them because of bad communication and inefficient collaboration.
When inventors, corporate teams, internal counsels, IP committees, and executives can’t work seamlessly, frustration builds fast.
And guess who gets the blame? The law firm.
First Scenario: The Disappearing Invention Disclosure
An inventor submits an invention disclosure. Weeks go by, and they hear nothing.
They assume the law firm forgot about it or doesn’t prioritize their invention.
And by the time the idea is reviewed, the company has moved on or a competitor has filed a similar patent.
The result? The company feels the law firm is too slow and unresponsive. They start looking elsewhere.
Second Scenario: The Email Black Hole
Your legal team asks for technical clarifications from R&D. The email gets buried in an inbox, delaying the filing process.
Deadlines are missed. The company loses its priority filing date.
What happens? The client blames the law firm for inefficiency and questions their competence.
Third Scenario: No Clear Decision-Making Process
A high-value disclosure is stuck in limbo because no one knows who needs to approve it next.
Internal teams argue over patent strategy, but the law firm doesn’t proactively guide them.
The disclosure never gets filed, and leadership starts seeing the firm as an obstacle, not a partner.
So, How to Fix It? Offer Seamless Collaboration Tools
- Centralized invention disclosure platforms so no idea gets lost
- Real-time collaboration for inventors, IP committees, and legal teams
- Automated workflows to ensure disclosures move forward without bottlenecks
#4 Crafting Data-Driven Patent Strategies
Patent filings secure rights, yes, but they are also about making strategic business moves.
Yet, many law firms still treat patenting like a routine paperwork process, missing out on the bigger picture.
And companies don’t want to waste money filing patents that won’t bring ROI. They want to know:
- Which ideas are worth patenting?
- Where should we file to get the most protection?
- What’s the competition doing, and how do we stay ahead?
Simply put, law firms lose clients without a data-backed approach.
Think about it.
A client patents an invention in the U.S., only to realize later that their biggest competitors dominate Europe.
Now they need an expensive, rushed expansion strategy or risk losing market share.
They blame the law firm for not advising them better.
How Law Firms Can Turn This Into a Competitive Advantage?
- Patent Landscape Analysis: Show clients which technologies are gaining traction and where their competitors are filing.
- AI-Powered Prior Art & Market Research: Help clients focus on truly novel and high-value inventions.
- Portfolio Optimization: Advise on which patents to keep, license, or abandon to free up resources.
#5 Optimizing Patent Portfolios
Like any investment, some patents pay off, and some drain resources.
Yet, many law firms fail to help clients strategically manage their portfolios. The result? Companies waste thousands on maintenance fees for patents that bring zero ROI.
Without a clear portfolio strategy, businesses get stuck in an endless cycle of filing, maintaining, and abandoning patents without ever maximizing their value.
How Law Firms Can Provide Real Value?
- Portfolio Pruning: Regularly review portfolios and recommend which patents to maintain, abandon, or sell.
- Licensing & Monetization Strategies: Identify patents that could be licensed out for additional revenue.
- Data-Driven Portfolio Analysis: Use AI and analytics tools to track which patents align with business goals.
#6 Cutting Down on Non-Billable Hours
Non-billable hours have been a major pain point, both for firms and their clients, for ages now.
The more time attorneys spend chasing down inventors for disclosures, organizing reviews, and managing endless email chains, the more it eats into profitability.
Reducing non-billable hours isn’t about pushing your team to work harder but helping them work smarter.
How Firms Can Solve This:
- Automate invention disclosure intake with AI-powered tools.
- Implement structured workflows so approvals move seamlessly between inventors, R&D teams, and legal teams.
- Use centralized platforms that track the progress of disclosures, reducing unnecessary emails and meetings.
The goal isn’t to eliminate these hours altogether – that’s neither realistic nor beneficial.
Instead, it’s about creating a structured, efficient way to handle these hours so they don’t detract from profitability.
Read On: Stop Non-Billable Hours From Costing You Profit!
Ending Note: The Risks of Offering Only Patent Filing Services
#1 High Client Churn
Businesses are outgrowing firms that don’t actively support their innovation pipeline.
If you’re only filing patents without helping clients generate, evaluate, and optimize their inventions, they’ll look elsewhere.
Fortune 500 companies switch from a traditional IP law firm to a tech-enabled ALSP (Alternative Legal Service Provider) mainly because the latter help them run structured Innovation Challenges, refine disclosures, and predict patent success using AI.
#2 Missed Revenue Opportunities
Sticking to patent filing services alone is leaving money on the table.
Clients are willing to pay for invention disclosure management, portfolio optimization, and IP strategy consulting—but if you don’t offer these, someone else will.
Expanding beyond filings can unlock new revenue streams.
#3 Competition from Tech-Enabled IP Services
Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs) and tech-driven IP management platforms are disrupting the industry. They provide end-to-end solutions—from AI-assisted invention
The bottom line? If your firm doesn’t evolve, tech-enabled competitors will offer more for less—and take your clients with them.
To stay competitive, law firms must evolve from filing services to innovation enablers.
