Why the daily life of trademark attorneys is about to get a lot better

 For the last few months, we’ve been working with the trademark practice at Mischon de Reya, getting ready to launch the new version of LawPanel. It’s currently in private beta, and we’re very excited about releasing it to the public later this Summer.

 

It’s been a real privilege to have so much feedback from such a well-respected practice. One of the most rewarding things about our time on the MDR Lab programme has been observing the real-life implications of IP management software for those who spend so much of their day using it.

 

The problem with technologists is that we tend to talk in our own private jargon. We’re passionate about what LawPanel can achieve within the sector, but even we spend too much time talking about APIs and dynamic programming and not enough explaining what all this means for the user.

 

With that in mind, we wanted to explain some of the practical results of our approach, and how LawPanel will help change the working life of trademark attorneys for the better.

 

1. It’s time to automate trademark docketing

 

Trademark attorneys are experts in their field. Every member of a practice represents years of academic study, hard work, and practical experience of IP law.

 

And yet, many trademark attorneys spend hours every day locked in a cycle of dull, repetitive data entry.

 

Most docketing software is decades behind the state of the art, and so most trademark practices are stuck with an absurdly inconvenient docketing process. Before attorneys can actually start doing their job, they have to waste time copying, pasting, and filling in an endless series of fields.

 

Automated docketing doesn’t just make the process faster; it makes it an order of magnitude easier. Where user input is required, we use auto-complete and various registry specific rules to speed up the process. Everything else is transferred straight from the registry.

 

The results? On the most frequent docketing tasks, LawPanel lets trademark attorneys get tasks done up to three times faster than the leading competing software.

 

That means tasks that used to take fifteen minutes take only five. Multiplied across a week’s worth of tasks, that frees up an enormous amount of time.

 

That’s good news for the firm, but it’s also good news for the attorneys. They can leave the filing to LawPanel and concentrate on the intellectual work instead.

 

  2.  Let your portfolio worry about keeping itself up to date

 

Every time a record in a registry changes status, attorneys need to make sure they update their records. There is absolutely no need for it to be this way.

 

Because LawPanel continually synchronizes users’ trademark records with official registry data from over 50 registries, the system notes any changes, and flags them for their attention. All those changes are put into the history of that trademark, so you can review exactly what was changed and when.

 

But that’s only half the story. While LawPanel scans the registries for changes, it also knows what changes it expects to see.

 

For example, if you have a dozen new trademark applications pending approval, LawPanel keeps track of how long they’re taking. By cross-referencing with the standard approval process, it is able to detect when there is an unusual delay.

 

The system will alert users about these potential problems, prompting them to get in touch with the registry.

 

3. Smart software can spot problems before you do

 

What attorneys are good at is thinking. But, like every other human on the face of the planet, they are not built to review billions of bytes of digital data every day.

 

Human error is inevitable. And it becomes a lot more inevitable when you’re managing a large team of IP lawyers or dealing with overseas agents. All it takes is for some miscommunication or a missed email – perhaps a paralegal accidentally deletes a renewal date – and, somewhere down the line, there could me major consequences.

 

Until now, the onus has been on lawyers to check, double-check, and triple-check their records. But it doesn’t need to be that way.

 

Because LawPanel understands what a trademark record should look like, the system automatically picks up on anything out of the ordinary. It then highlights the suspected problem and alerts its users.

 

In essence, it’s the same idea as the spell-check function in a word processing program. By constantly scanning your records for errors, LawPanel is always on hand to help you spot problems before they become problems.

 

Again, this is good news for clients and firms, but it’s even better news for trademark attorneys themselves.

 

So, hopefully we’ve conveyed a little of why we’re so excited about the software we’ve been building over the last few months. LawPanel has always been about leveraging the latest technology to energize the trademark sector.

 

Just as importantly, though, it has the potential to transform working life for trademark attorneys too.

 

We’ll be keeping our current users updated about these and other upcoming improvements. If you’re interested in trialing the beta version, you can contact us here.