Unlike most law firms, we don’t invoice our clients by the hour and we don’t invoice our clients for phone calls. These practices, synonymous with modern day law firms, were forced upon lawyers by accountants a few decades ago. I believe that they run counter to our principles of building long-term relationships and fostering deep dialogues with our clients.

Instead, we invoice our clients with a fixed fee for completed projects. The fixed fee structure encourages our clients to call us and to involve us in their work, which promotes a team mentality and ultimately provides a superior patent portfolio. The fixed fee structure also has the added benefit of eliminating the fear of runaway legal fees and allowing accurate budgets.

We set our fees based on the economic report published every two years by the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA). Based on the last three AIPLA economic reports, the estimated 2011 median legal fees for a patent application is approximately $12,000.