The best patent attorneys are already booked. This is how to become their Favorite Client. Hint: it is not about paying more.
Who are the Best Patent Attorneys?
The best patent attorneys are solo attorneys who have performed many roles in the patent ecosystem. They probably had real-world engineering experience, got into patent law to draft applications, but had a stint in-house, doing litigation, or other experience putting patents to work in business. They have personally lived with the effects of badly written patent applications, and they have constantly grown and learned at every step.
These attorneys (or sometimes patent agents) are extremely hard to find.
We are not talking about the one-trick ponies who learned patent drafting inside a law firm and never did anything else. These solos are often still doing bill-by-the-hour.
We are not talking about bottom feeder, cut-rate, fixed fee attorneys who grind volume patent applications for independent inventors and other non-sophisticated clients.
We are talking about the best-of-the-best. The agents/attorneys who write the best possible patent applications with the context of someone who has lived with the consequences.
Why You Cannot Use Them, Yet
Here is the catch. The best-of-the-best are hard to find, but they have plenty of options.
For you to use them effectively, you need to understand how they think and how to create your processes to use these attorneys in the best way.
A solo patent attorney lives with four miseries:
- not knowing whether work will keep showing up,
- the constant search for new clients and the years it takes to learn their business,
- the overhead of managing clients who are disorganized, and
- the liability of docket management.
The good ones escape all four the same way: They find a great client and build a long term relationship.
As a long term solo myself, I can attest to the ever present fear that I would be busy for the next week, but nothing after that. Will any new work show up? Eventually, the work did show up, but not without a lot of (maybe self-inflicted) stress on my end.
The second biggest pain point is finding, onboarding, and getting to know the clients. The very best attorneys know that clients cannot tell a good patent from a bad one, so their competitive advantage is hidden. They struggle to find clients who actually value and appreciate the differences they bring to the table, so they typically find clients by word of mouth.
The interaction with a client is often brief and very sporadic. It takes years to really understand their business, get to know them personally, and develop an understanding of how to serve them the best.
Another pain point is waiting for the client. They report to the client and wait for guidance, but they need to explain everything in detail so the client can make an informed decision. For clients who are not patent attorneys, the attorney has to explain all the options for a lay person. This can be excruciatingly painful, especially when the client goes through a phase of being a novice armchair patent “expert” and needs the most painful, detailed explanation of why their AI tool is wrong.
Lastly, docketing is the biggest liability for every patent attorney. You never get sued for writing a bad patent application, but you most certainly get sued for missing a filing date.
With this context, how do you become your patent attorney’s favorite client? It is not by paying more than the other clients. It is by addressing the attorney’s needs.
How to Be Their Favorite Client
I have always treated outside contractors with the mindset that I want to be their Favorite Client.
For example, I used a patent illustrator for years that worked for several attorneys in the area. She was wonderful to work with, did amazing work, and was hilariously funny. I was her Favorite Client.
Some attorneys would wait to the last minute to send her jobs, so everything was a rush. Attorneys would pay her slowly — some attorneys would pay illustrators only when they got paid, which may be months later. Many attorneys would send her something incomplete, then send endless changes as they wrote their patent applications.
I did none of that.
I only sent her drawings that were complete and never required changes. (I might file hand-drawn figures and do a preliminary amendment after the fact so that she was never rushed.) I paid immediately, often within an hour of receiving an invoice.
Consequently, when I did have a rush job, she took my call. She would do some really cool illustrations, like doing a pen and ink portrait of a friend and incorporating them into a patent illustration. Sadly, she died of cancer several years ago and I still think of her.
When I talk to solos about doing the work from my Chief IP Officer (CIPO) engagements, I have that same mindset: how can I make things so good that I am their favorite client.
Everyone has their own yardstick of what a good client is. Here’s mine:
Prepare the invention disclosure well.
A well prepared invention disclosure is thorough enough that the attorney gets up to speed quickly, has good context, and knows the business case we are trying to protect. The patent application is not written for them, but it leaves meat on the bone for them to add incredible value and expertise.
A good invention disclosure is a framework on which the attorney adds loads of value. You might think: I will just give the disclosure to AI to fill in the rest. This is where you miss the true value of the attorney’s grey hair for which you are paying.
It is easy for AI to stuff a bunch of words together that sounds technical and legal. But an experienced attorney does something much more.
Well-drafted patents have several audiences and many different considerations. An attorney is visualizing the examiner reading the specification, the judge and jury trying to understand the invention, the competitor trying to get around the patent. At the same time, they are avoiding patent profanity, crafting the language to not invoke KSR but at the same time being compliant with EPO requirements, and countless other legal nits they have to pick.
A good invention disclosure is not AI slop.
There is a widespread belief that you can dump an “idea” into some LLM and get a good invention disclosure. There are dozens of companies who are selling “AI systems” that generate full patent applications in a touch of a button and $500. (The fact that they are indistinguishable from what Claude or ChatGPT generate for free is not something that they mention.)
One key frustration for a fixed fee attorney is when the invention is not complete. The client says they want a patent on something but the attorney has to spend inordinate amount of time extracting the invention or just making up something. The attorney may be thrashing endlessly trying to put something on a piece of paper that seems passable, but all the time they are frustrated.
This is not what we do.
Our goal is IP that will be used in business, not a plaque on the wall. In order to do that, I have already spent a long time understanding the client’s business, working through their product roadmap, studying competitor patents and competitor products, and teasing out the key technologies that give a company a competitive advantage. I do the homework.
Our invention disclosures are written by a patent attorney for a patent attorney.
My invention disclosures include claim directions, with example independent claims that are hand-drafted and searched ahead of time. They get the business cases we intend to protect, as well as as many design-around variations as we could generate. Our business cases are studied by the client’s management so that we are targeting what the business thinks will be valuable.
When the attorney gets the disclosure, they have everything they need to write a good application.
A defined process prevents “moving the goal.”
The attorney gets a process to do their best work. We provide a style guide that captures everything we know about patent drafting. We give them structure about our preferred style. I have walked in their shoes, and my goal is to give them everything so I am their Favorite Client.
The attorney also receives a prosecution playbook — standing instructions for how to handle common office action rejections, pre-authorized within defined parameters. When the examiner rejects claims 1–7 under Section 103, the attorney does not need to write a three-option email to a CEO who will not understand it. The attorney knows what scope is non-negotiable, what narrowing is acceptable, and when to escalate. They act.[2]
The attorney works on fixed fees — a set price for each phase: drafting, office action responses, examiner interviews, issue processing. Fixed fees reward efficiency. The attorney earns more per hour because the waste is gone. The client pays less per family because the overhead is gone. Both sides know exactly what the engagement costs.
The attorney does not manage docketing. The company tracks every deadline, every office action, every maintenance fee. The attorney does not send reminder letters. The attorney does not chase signatures. The attorney does not file extensions of time because someone did not respond.
And make sure they get paid immediately.
Most importantly: they know the criteria. The goal posts are not moving. We are not adding inventions after they are complete. We are not holding them to standards that vary from one patent to the next.
The attorney knows that if they do a good job the first time, they are done and get paid. This is how they make money, but more importantly, it is how I become their Favorite Client.
The attorney practices law. All day. Every day. That is what they built their practices to do.[3]
The System That Makes It Possible
None of this works without the layer that connects the business to the attorney.
A Chief IP Officer builds the infrastructure that transforms the client from chaos into the best engagement the attorney has ever had. The CIPO conducts the invention disclosure meeting, builds the prosecution playbook, manages the docketing, sets the budget, defines the quality standards, and makes every strategic decision before the attorney touches the file.
The attorney receives a complete package and executes. No guessing. No chasing. No waiting. No liability-driven option emails to a CEO who does not understand prosecution.
These attorneys are looking for exactly the kind of client that a CIPO-managed company becomes: organized, decisive, technically sophisticated, strategically clear. The engagement is a pleasure instead of a grind. The work is interesting. The instructions are clear. The decisions are already made. For many of them, the managed model is the first time they get to focus entirely on the craft of patent law, without the overhead and the administrative chaos that pull a solo practitioner away from the work.
The CIPO maintains a panel of two to four attorneys — providing redundancy, competitive pressure, specialization across technology areas, and flexibility to route work to the attorney best suited for each case. Because the company owns the docketing and the strategy, switching attorneys is seamless. There is no lock-in to one firm. There is no dependency on a single firm’s institutional knowledge.
Every burden removed from the attorney’s plate is a cost removed from the company’s invoice.
Microsoft, IBM, Qualcomm, and Facebook all run variations of this model. They figured it out decades ago: invest in the internal infrastructure — the CIPO function — that makes outside counsel efficient, and you get the best legal work at the lowest cost.[4]
The only difference is scale. Those companies file thousands of patents a year. The framework works the same way at five patents. The attorneys are the same. The process is the same. The only thing that changes is who manages it.
1 The structured disclosure process — competitive landscape, claim targets, design-around analysis, and business rationale — is described in The Invention Disclosure Meeting Is Where Patent Value Is Decided. ↩
2 The prosecution playbook — standing instructions, response protocols, and pre-authorized decision parameters — is covered in Managing the Process in Investing in Patents. ↩
3 The transformation of the attorney’s experience under the managed model — from administrative chaos to focused legal practice — is described in Quirks of the Attorney/Client Relationship in Investing in Patents. ↩
4 Microsoft’s Virtual Firm program — and how it serves as a model for the managed counsel framework — is covered in Managing the Process in Investing in Patents. ↩
