10 Ways to Start Your Year Off Right

Starting the year off on the right foot is crucial for patent attorneys to ensure efficiency, productivity, and success in their practice. 

Here are 10 ways to kickstart your year effectively:

1. Review your current patent portfolio

Start by reviewing your firm's patent performance, current client relationships, and lingering business opportunities.

With Juristat’s Prosecution Health Dashboard, you can start the year off right with an honest, data-driven look at the strength of your patent prosecution. Using analysis found only at Juristat, examine your firm’s normalized allowance rate, year-over-year filing growth rate, as well as the distribution of your work across your client portfolio to jump-start improvements in your 2024 strategy.

2. Update your knowledge base

Stay updated with recent changes in patent law, court rulings, and regulations that might impact your patent practice. Last year might be a blur, so this is a good time to review the relevant news and update your processes and workflows accordingly.

3. Set clear goals

Define achievable goals for the year, whether it's acquiring new clients, increasing your allowance rate, or expanding your filing volume (and your firm’s presence) in a particular technology.

With Juristat, you can use your firm’s health score as a comprehensive benchmark. This overall score combines normalized allowance rate, normalized average office actions, filing volume, and distribution of pending applications. Check your score on a regular basis to track your progress through the year.

4. Improve your team’s efficiency

You may have spent the past twelve months (or twelve years?) lamenting the fact that administrative tasks involved with running your practice were getting in the way of growing your practice. Start this year off right by automating away what you can, including time-consuming office action responses and IDS prep, to leave space for your team to flourish.

5. Enhance client communication

Every email is a chance to strengthen your relationship with your clients and to build your business. Sending regular notes on the progress of a particular application, of opportunities found in their portfolio or even just of updates at the USPTO gives you the chance to stay top of mind. 

6. Network and build relationships

Network with your fellow patent professionals, attend legal industry events, and join professional associations such as NALA and AIPLA to expand your professional circle. Building relationships can lead to referrals and new opportunities.

7. Embrace technology

New software and tools can simplify every part of your day, from research to documentation, or even complete some of your more tedious tasks. Whether you’re sending an email or filing a complicated IDS, let this be the year technology lightens your load.

8. Evaluate and enhance marketing and business development strategies

Don’t let Q1 pass without taking a look at your firm’s marketing and business development strategy. Take a look at your work. How many new clients are you bringing in? How often are your RFP responses successful?

You can use Juristat’s Prosecution Health Dashboard data to evaluate your business development strategy. From there, you can identify assignees where you're outperforming their current counsel, and companies to target as you look to expand your book of business. 

Additionally, the Dashboard includes key performance metrics and competitive intelligence data to analyze your current client portfolio and identify which are healthy, which have the most growth potential, and which are at risk.

9. Research your (or your client’s) competitors

How can you outperform your competitors if you don’t know who they are? Whether you are working in-house, or managing a portfolio for a blue-chip company, it is important to understand what you’re up against.

Start the year off right by performing a landscape analysis, then dive deeper as you gather intelligence on major competitors, as well as emerging startups in the market. Check out four strategies you can use, and how Juristat can help.

10. Prioritize work-life balance

If setting your practice up for a year of unprecedented success is top of mind, Juristat can help. Learn how our industry-leading database and workflow automation systems can make 2024 the best year yet by scheduling a demo today.