Mr Shah, a former patent litigator at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Paul Hastings has founded the new law firm in efforts to serve the growing tech scene in San Antonio and central Texas by taking advantage of new trends in legal tech that reduce costs and increase efficiencies in dispensing legal services.
Turning away clients
‘When I was litigating patents at Akin Gump, I received a lot of questions from established and start-up tech companies in San Antonio about patent protection and intellectual property strategy,’ said Mr Shah. But he explained that he couldn’t serve those potential clients at his previous firm because the firm specialised in patent litigation and did not prosecute patents. ‘After I turned down a number of clients, I realised that there is a huge demand for patent counseling services in San Antonio. At that point, I decided to put to use my prior experience in patent prosecution and patent counseling by serving clients in San Antonio.’
Silicon Valley experience
Prior to moving to San Antonio, Mr Shah practiced patent law with one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent technology law firms. ‘I wrote my first patent for Palm (the maker of the then-ubiquitous Palm Pilot PDA) when I was just a second-year law student. I immediately fell in love with the subject, and haven’t looked back since.’
Facebook and Google clients
Mr Shah cut his teeth in the field by writing patents for technology titans in Silicon Valley such as Google and Facebook as well as other start-ups. ‘I spent about 80 per cent of my time there writing patents for Facebook and Google, and I was able to work with software and medical device start-ups the other 20 per cent of the time. Those were formative years for me, and although I enjoyed litigating patents at Akin Gump and Paul Hastings, I craved working alongside inventors and super smart founders and executives of technology companies.’
Tech companies disrupting legal services
Mr Shah said that his decision to start his own law firm took shape when he discovered that technology companies were starting to disrupt how legal services were being dispensed. ‘In the past, there was a huge advantage to practicing law at a large law firm because you could gain a lot of insight into how the patent office was prosecuting patents by simply talking to your colleagues down the hall. By contrast, if you were at a small shop, you were sort of shooting in the dark and you may end up facing more rejections than your colleagues at larger firm.’
Utilising big data analytics
His new company uses big data analytics and other advances in legal tech to turn a traditional disadvantage into a competitive advantage. ‘By leveraging data analytics from Juristat and others, we can now know more about how a particular art-unit or an examiner at the Patent Office is prosecuting patents then my colleagues at large firms who don’t use data analytics. We also use technology offered by companies such as ReedTech and AltLegal to automate many of the drafting and docketing tasks that were previously performed by expensive attorneys or paralegals.’
Creating proprietary technology
But, the firm stated that it is in the process of building its own technology software that would automate more of the back-end legal processes for businesses. ‘By leveraging these technologies, we are able to provide IP services that rival the biggest law firms in the country, but at a fraction of the cost.’
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