The Importance of Hiring An Experienced IP Paralegal To Support Your Intellectual Property Needs
- empresslegal
- February 21, 2022
- 5:33 am
- No Comments
As an intellectual property (“IP”) practitioner or a law firm, boosting efficiency while keeping expenses down is a constant challenge in today’s competitive industry, where IP filings globally rise every year. Intellectual property operations for intellectual property attorneys, law firms, and in-house legal teams are both time-consuming and costly. Because these duties are essential, they frequently require help to lessen their burden.
Using a paralegal service may be a lifesaver in these situations since it not only saves time and money but increases efficiency. Your financial line can benefit from hiring an IP paralegal, despite the requirement to limit expenses and adapt to changing customer dynamics. In this blog post, we at Empress Legal will lay down the key advantages an IP paralegal will bring to your legal practice, be it at a large or small scale.
Availability of Varied Services
In today’s legal world, a contemporary paralegal not only executes legal services but can also give much-needed assistance and management to your law firm. IP practitioners, especially the solo ones, enjoy their work and are very proficient at the legal side of things. However, when it comes to running an office, they typically lack the necessary aptness on an administrative level.
With an experienced and skilled paralegal in place, you can outsource some or all the administrative tasks that you would otherwise have to handle on your own. You can forget about activities such as website creation, content creation, document review, scheduling & calendaring, docketing, correspondence & marketing, data entry & management, and process development and leave it to the expert paralegal. At the same time, you focus on giving your best to the clients.
Monetary Advantages
An IP law firm’s bottom line gains from delegating less specialist work to qualified paralegals. Paralegal support services will cost you less than a regular salaried employee would cost. Thus, if your firm needs emergency services every now and then, you can outsource it every time rather than employing a full-time attorney. Because of outsourcing, your law firm needs only to hire IP paralegals when needed. This helps you to be flexible and helps with your financials.
This can save money by hiring paralegals since you would not have to pay for employee perks. When hiring outsourced paralegals, payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation and disability, health insurance, and other benefits are not a concern for IP practitioners. On-demand IP paralegal services can benefit law firms of all sizes because of their relatively lower cost.
Improved Performance
As an IP attorney, your goal would be to help as many clients as possible while maintaining your respectability. An experienced IP paralegal will allow you to manage more cases while providing adequate counsel for each client. The paralegal can help your office function more quickly and efficiently by taking up activities that do not need an IP attorney’s involvement, such as the billable work. Thus, you can be more responsive to all your clients, which will give you an edge in today’s competitive market.
High-Quality Tasks
On a general note, a paralegal’s compensation is dependent on the amount of work they accomplish, not on the number of hours they put in. Given that case, they have a strong work ethic and a desire to succeed. IP paralegals specialize in all aspects of IP laws, including patents, copyrights, and trademarks, enhancing their marketability and effectiveness.
Maintaining Schedules
Patent application drafting, IP litigation drafting, and other aspects of the IP legal proceedings are time-consuming due to their complexities. Experienced paralegals in the field of IP are familiar with the various requirements for the content and presentation of legal papers.
IP paralegals will help you complete the necessary paperwork on schedule, and they excel at it. This will help you focus more on dealing with clients, bring in extra clients, and handle all your pending filing and drafting work aptly.
Getting the Right Documents Together
Maintaining and organizing patent litigation documents can be tedious and require attention to detail. These documents must be well organized and ready at hand before filing. Incomplete or unorganized documents right before the filing date can hurt your firm. An experienced patent paralegal can be hired to take care of this and adequately organize all documents needed for patent litigation. Paralegals also help to maintain calendars and case schedules.
IP paralegals can also keep track of your IP application statuses, including prosecution status. In addition to this, they can also act based on developments in an application, such as initiating office actions. Paralegals specializing in intellectual property law can also assist in drafting and correcting patent litigation documents, especially the highly technical ones, as they are well versed and skilled.
Enhanced Adaptability
IP paralegal services can be taken advantage of on an as-needed basis even if your law firm already has paralegals working for you on staff. Outsourced paralegals can assist with any project, whether a long-term contract or a one-time task. Given that you can avail of IP paralegal services when needed, you can hire outsourced paralegals at times of need. For example, law firms often hire outsourced paralegals over the Christmas season to allow their employees to take time off.
IP paralegals can also help with complex cases, cover maternity leave or vacation personnel, and provide in-house staff with a more manageable burden. Short-term paralegals may be more cost-effective, depending on your law firm’s requirements, as we have mentioned earlier. A law firm’s internal legal resources may be better used if it hires paralegals during times of high demand.
Additionally, outsourcing on-demand paralegal services may increase morale when a firm’s burden is getting too much.
Your IP law firm’s burden can in no doubt significantly benefit from taking recourse to paralegal support services. However, it is up to your firm to examine its internal requirements and choose when the best moment is to hire the proper temporary person for the role. Ensure you know what you want before taking advantage of the financial and flexibility gains you stand to make from hiring an IP paralegal.
