2015 Legal Awards

M&A awards Legal Awards 2015 15 LEGAL awards Nevrivy Patent Law Group P.L.L.C. specialises in patent procurement and strategic IP counselling, which includes advising clients regarding patentability, infringement, and validity of patent claims. In addition to this we also represent clients in transactions involving intellectual property, such as mergers and acquisitions, licensing and development agreements. Our firm represents a wide range of clients, from individual inventors, start-ups and emerging firms to Fortune 500 firms, located throughout the world. The majority of our work is in the biotech, pharmaceutical and energy fields, al- though we also represent a number of clients having mechanical device and consumer products related inventions. The key driver of our firm’s success is our relationship with these clients and close contacts, and as such we measure our success by the success of our clients, which means providing successful outcomes in their matters. The majority of our clients are repeat purchasers of legal services, and so we benchmark our business success by their continued growth and engagement with us, which is directly tied to our performance on their matters. In order to ensure these repeat purchasers continue to use our business for their legal needs we are dedicated to focusing our efforts and spending a lot of time in understanding our clients’ technologies and the particular sector that they compete in. With patents it is important to have a very deep understanding of the underlying technology and invention and how it fits into the overall technological landscape and most importantly how it is different. Once armed with that information, we are best able to counsel and advise the client. Strong and persuasive writing ability is also a critical element for success, since an important aspect of our job is to convince patent examiners or judges to agree with us. Each client engagement and each matter we work on is viewed by us as an opportunity to showcase our knowledge and talent and demonstrate how hard we work for clients. That is our overriding philosophy for acquisition of new business; keeping clients very happy and impressing them with our work, so that they will give us new projects and tell others about us. Alongside a strong working relationship we find that the most important attributes are having a very high degree of technical and legal competence along with a focus on providing excellent client service at all times. It is also important to be able to be nimble and adapt since the industries and clients we serve can change rapidly. Currently, we do not set any benchmarks or targets for firm growth. Instead we are steadily growing based on the business that comes to us from existing clients and from referrals and other marketing activities. We then focus on providing outstanding work product and client service, and grow with the clients. Our client focused approach has put us into contact with a wide variety of clients, and the variety of cases we have worked on for them has provided us with unique insight into the legal industry, which is very dynamic and currently undergoing rapid change. The major outside influence we find is technology, which has enabled many law firms to become much more innovative in how they organize, manage workflows and deliver legal services to clients. Many of these tech- nological changes are enabling the law firms to run more efficiently and be more collaborative, which directly benefits clients. However, implementation of some of these technologies, such as cloud computing, raises challenges regarding maintaining adequate data security, which is crucial for law firms and clients. In pharmaceutical and biotech patents, there also are some legal headwinds facing our clients in view of recent court decisions involving patenting laws and products of nature, which has important implications for personalized medicine and diagnostics. Further, in-house legal departments are also undergoing rapid change in how they manage their cases and work with outside counsel. Many in-house legal departments are expecting greater flexibility and versatility from their outside legal counsel, so it is important for law firms to adapt how they operate in order to mesh with their client’s needs as well. There is a trend currently in the legal industry for larger companies to move more and more of their legal work in-house to try and minimize costs instead of using outside counsel, and that trend might continue into 2016. However, there are significant opportunities to represent new start-ups and emerging firms who will need IP legal services. Further, there are also increased opportunities for IP due diligence work in mergers and acqui- sitions which should continue into 2016 and which we are excited to capitalise on in the future. In order to capitalise on these opportunities we will likely be adding a few attorneys to our practice in the coming year to help us manage our growth. We are also expanding some of the pro bono work our firm does helping disabled U.S. veteran entrepreneurs with their IP matters, which is very satisfying and rewarding work. Additionally, maintaining a diversified client base is key to ensuring that we are buffered against any reduction in business from one particular sector, and whilst we currently have a fairly diversified client base and revenue distribution, which insulates us from swings in the marketplace we are keen to diversify further in the future. This has the added advantage of providing us with additional experience within our field, which will help us to offer a fuller service to our clients moving forward. Name: Daniel J. Nevrivy, Ph.D. Email: [email protected] Web: www.nevrivylaw.com Address: 1000 Potomac Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, D.C. 20007 Telephone: 202-650-6905