I guess that I have always thought about my career in law a little differently.
Some of that maybe comes from living in Denmark where we naturally think a bit more about quality of life and happiness is held in higher esteem. Denmark is consistently ranked as one of the happiest countries in the world and so the fabric of society is geared differently than in many other countries.
I have never believed in the ide of finding ‘work-life’ balance.
To me, it is a nonsense idea. It doesn’t exist. You just have your life, and your work is a part of that in the same way as your health, your family and your passions are. I’m very lucky that I have always considered the practice of law to be amongst my passions, much like racquetball, cycling and fitness are too.
My journey through achieving partnership in a law firm, realising that wasn’t where I wanted to be, building my own successful law firm and then building a legal technology company has given me a fairly unique perspective, I would say. I can resonate with the experiences of associates struggling to make their way to partner, partners trying to run profitable law firms that are great places to work and deliver real value to their clients as well as the technology side of the conversation.
I see the true value that lawyers in the intellectual property practice area really deliver.
But also, how it is difficult for both lawyers and their clients to really feel that value because it gets swallowed up by massive volumes of manual work and that isn’t the life that any of us want to be living.
And so along that journey, I came to see the places in my own day-to-day work practices where the intelligent application and use of smart technologies could have so much impact in reducing workloads, acquiring more clients, reducing the stress levels of everyone in the firm, increasing my enjoyment in the type of work I was doing all day and increasing the profit margins too, that it really became my all-consuming passion.
I wanted to find simple but smart solutions to the constant problem of lack of scalability in IP focused law firms.
The manual work processes involved means that you really cannot scale past what the next associate you hire can grind through in a day. Your growth is limited, and that fact puts your firm at the mercy of rising overhead costs and the market pressure to reduce prices.
More than anything, I want to see IP law firms and lawyers thrive so not only have we developed a full suite of tools for the end-to-end management of IP but also tools in assist in gaining more referrals and more new business which we all know is the lifeblood of any firm. These have historically also been challenging, requiring sometimes huge expenses in attending conferences and time away from the office.
And there are problems within the IP industry that we have yet to solve.
One of the most exciting parts of my role is in talking to lawyers and partners from different areas of IP, discussing their challenges and seeing where we already have solutions and what we can build next. There is a real and very exciting shift towards a better and more fulfilling life as a lawyer happening globally and we are so excited to be on the front lines of that.