Women
of Intellectual Property
Firm
sees benefit to marketing women in IP practice
By
April Rockstead Barker
Special to Wisconsin Law Journal
Feb.
23, 2005
 |
“A
lot of the general counsels from a lot of the big companies are requiring their
outside counsel to be diverse. And we can certainly provide a work force that
does have the gender diversity." Billie
Jean Smith,
Partner, Michael Best & Friedrich LLP |
In
a novel approach to marketing its intellectual property practice, Michael Best
& Friedrich LLP is promoting some valuable assets: Women.
Twenty-three
of the firm's 58 intellectual property attorneys are women, and 15 of the firm's
20 other intellectual property professionals are women.
"We
think we have something pretty unique, and at least anecdotally, we don't know
of anyone else that has as large a group as we do," said Billie Jean Smith,
a partner in the firm and the chair of its Intellectual Property Women's Marketing
Initiative.
The
presence of women in the firm's intellectual property group is not new, Smith
said during a recent interview with the Wisconsin Law Journal.
"We've
certainly had women here for quite some time," she said. "The public
discussion in our marketing efforts to promote IP women as part of Michael Best
& Friedrich has only been within about the last year, and we're still really
early in that promotional process."
The
"Intellectual Property Women" subgroup featured on the firm's Website
is a specialty area within the firm's intellectual property group, Smith said.
While
others may try to copy the strategy, and some already advertise the women in their
firms as a whole, Michael Best & Friedrich intends to pioneer a marketing
approach specific to women in intellectual property practice, she said.
"We
hope to be the first out there," Smith said. "We suspect that there
may be others that come after us. But we think we're the first."
Diversity
Crucial to Clients
A
strong representation of women in a practice is an advantage in a time when many
large corporate clients will work only with firms that can provide evidence of
diversity among their attorneys, Smith said.
"A
lot of the general counsels from a lot of the big companies are requiring their
outside counsel to be diverse," she said. "And we can certainly provide
a work force that does have the gender diversity. So it opens up for us the clients
that we're able to attract."
For
some clients, it is not enough to have women on the letterhead, Smith said; they
also want to see evidence that women are participating in the work on the files.
Although
in some cases women only want to hire lawyers who are women, that is not always
the case, Smith said.
"Some
do, and some have no preference," she said. "I have clients who came
to me because they wanted to deal with a woman patent attorney. I have other clients
[for whom] that wasn't their primary motivation."
In
many of the large biotechnology companies, many of the top executives are men,
according to Karen S. Canady, an intellectual property attorney in California
who also chairs the Women in IP Law Committee of the American Intellectual Property
Law Association (AIPLA).
"But
a lot of the patent attorneys that are on the client side of hiring outside patent
counsel — those are women, in many cases," she said. "And I have
seen that a lot of times there's a dynamic that's very positive, where they like
working with women as their outside counsel. And so definitely a good strategy
for a law firm is to have women for those clients to connect with."
In
her personal observation, many men who have recently entered the profession are
interested in family and work-life balance, Canady said, which reflects a general
societal trend toward including values traditionally seen as feminine as part
of a broader perspective that improves the profession as a whole.
"I
think that it's not just that women clients respond to women attorneys, but that
they respond to this other mindset that's emerging," she said.
Communication
Emphasized
The
Web site promotional materials for Michael, Best & Friedrich's Intellectual
Property Women specialty area highlight its professionals' "unique abilities
as communicators."
"It's
pretty well documented in a lot of the publications that women and men have different
communication styles," Smith said. "And when you bring both to the table,
one is not better than the other — they're different. And some clients are
comfortable with one style, some clients are comfortable with the other.
"That's
why we feel that by having a large group of intellectual property professionals
that come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, men, women, we can bring different problem
solving and different communication styles to clients and can better service our
clients."
Communication
with clients is a priority in general in the firm's practice, Smith added.
"We
believe not only our women lawyers but our male counterparts as well have a little
different style," she said. "You hear the geeky engineer stereotype,
and we definitely have broken that stereotype."
Recruiting
women in intellectual property law becomes easier after a firm has a solid group
of women in its practice, Smith said.
"It's
kind of a double hit, because you have to find women that go into sciences and
like technology and then that go into large law firms," she said. "And
that can be very difficult to do, but we found a way to do it and are a better
group because of it."
Data
Hard to Find
It
appears that there are significantly more women in intellectual property law than
there were just ten years ago, according to Canady, but a lack of recorded data
makes it difficult to find comparative information about the number of women in
firms' practices.
"We
often get asked if we know how many women practice and that kind of thing,"
she said, adding that AIPLA does distribute an annual economic survey that asks
its members about issues such as billing rates and compensation.
"One
of the questions they'll ask is gender information about their associates and
partners at firms, but I've looked through the results, and it's often not reported,"
Canady said. "And I don't know whether that implies that they have no females
at those firms, or they just don't want to say."
The
dearth of information came as a surprise to the marketing team at Michael Best
& Friedrich, as well, Smith said.
"We're
hoping we can trigger somebody to start keeping those statistics," she said.
