IP Litigation Boutique v. IP BigLaw Forum

[Anonymous User]

What are people's thoughts on going to a place like desmarais llp as opposed to V10 or V20 BigLaw general practice firms with strong IP lit departments (e.g. K+E, Covington)? Do you think there is a more realistic chance of making partner at a place like Desmarais?

[eljefe1]

what kind of undergrad degree do you have?

[Anonymous User]

Not sure I'm a fan of representing patent trolls, does anyone legitimate besides Desmarais do this?

[Anonymous User]

Bump. I'm also interested in hearing both sides to this question! What if the boutique is a firm like Fitzpatrick.

[Anonymous User]

Rising 3L currently summering at an IP lit boutique-- whatever grains of salt seem appropriate.

One major thing to consider is whether you're sure you want to give up any chance of patent prosecution work (assuming you have the requisite background). If that's a problem for you, a big firm with a dedicated IP group that does litigation/prosecution/licensing might be more to your liking. If that's not an issue, most likely the boutique will provide more substantive experience earlier as well as somewhat better p'ship prospects. (NB that I don't really know anything about Desmarais in particular. But in general litigation boutiques aren't built on a high-leverage pyramid model like the big firms tend to be, and so there's less of an expectation that you'll cycle through for a few years and then go off on your merry way.) You also need to figure out what your comfort level with flying by the seat of your pants is-- if you're at a boutique, there's good odds that you will frequently be asked to do things that you feel completely unprepared to do (as communicated to me by associates at the firm-- who like the fact that it works that way but acknowledge that it can be daunting).

If you're one of these folks who is super-ideological about TEH EVILS OF PATENT TROLLs then you likely won't be happy at a boutique that does p-side work. Even the very high-end plaintiff's side patent lit boutiques represent NPEs a decent amount (though the NPEs usually have like... actual real patents rather than the dreck that the true trolls are waving around). So that's another thing to think about.

[FSK]

Why not places like Fish & Finnegan? Seems like a good middleground.

[Anonymous User]

Not sure I'm a fan of representing patent trolls, does anyone legitimate besides Desmarais do this?

McKool, Tensegrity, Irell, AZA off the top of my head. Probably others. And just like those firms, Desmarais also does big company defense.

[Anonymous User]

What are people's thoughts on going to a place like Desmarais LLP as opposed to V10 or V20 BigLaw general practice firms with strong IP lit departments (e.g. K+E, Covington)? Do you think there is a more realistic chance of making partner at a place like Desmarais?

If you want a traditional firm experience (long hours, formal structure, typical junior to senior responsibility progression) and/or you are not 100% sure you want to practice patent litigation, go to Kirkland/WilmerHale/Covington.

The big selling points for Desmarais are compensation, early experience/responsibility, and no hourly billing (ETA: still long hours though). There are other factors but I think those are the main three. Plus the obvious one: opportunity to work with/under John Desmarais.

[Anonymous User]

Bump. I'm also interested in hearing both sides to this question! What if the boutique is a firm like Fitzpatrick.

If you have a choice between Fitzpatrick and a well-recognized IP group of a large firm, I would go large firm. Fitzpatrick is in a significant state of decline. They no-offered a large portion of their summer class this year.

On the other hand, there are Fitzpatrick alumni everywhere and it is relatively easy to lateral from there.

[Anonymous User]

Bump. I'm also interested in hearing both sides to this question! What if the boutique is a firm like Fitzpatrick.

I faced this decision last year, ultimately choosing to go to a big generalist firm over true IP Boutiques like Fitzpatrick or bigger IP-centric firms like Fish / Finnegan. From what I can tell, IP boutiques are losing a lot of business to bigger firms and are slowly dying out. For example, Fitzpatrick this summer just lost its active managing partner to Mayer Brown (http://abovethelaw.com/2014/06/managing ... -her-wake/).

Even shops like Fish and Finnegan are losing business and partners to bigger generalist firms (ex. Fish's PPP has taken a severe hit recently, Finnegan just lost two partners in it's IPR practice in DC in the past month). Again, the trend seems to be away from the boutiques for patent lit towards IP practice groups in big firms. As that happens, the top partners will move to big law firms where they will make more, and as they do that, the best and biggest cases will go with them.