UnitedLex. (Courtesy photo)

Am Law 100 firm Polsinelli is deepening its relationship with technology and legal services provider UnitedLex, launching a new venture to help clients manage and develop intellectual property assets.

While Polsinelli already turned to UnitedLex at the start of this year to build out a litigation support center focused on e-discovery, the IP teams for the two entities have been working together even longer.

Roughly a year ago, a mutual client set Joe Dearing, UnitedLex's executive vice president of global IP solutions, and Patrick Woolley, Polsinelli's IP department chairman, to collaborating on new ideas in patent drafting, prosecution and monetization. Dearing's 200-person team is heavy on technologists, engineers and doctorates, with just two attorneys. Woolley's department at Polsinelli is home to roughly 130 patent agents and attorneys.

"It became very obvious to the two of us that there was a big opportunity to combine our skill set from the two teams," Dearing said. "We're combining legal and technical expertise to solve problems that are difficult and expensive to solve for one company and one law firm."

Together, they are targeting clients in the tech sector, medical devices, and the auto industry, businesses that invest significant money in IP up front and have accumulated significant patent portfolios over the years.

"They often need help in rediscovering what they have in their patent portfolio," Dearing said. "When you have patents with a 20-year life, the patents that you filed 10 years ago are typically not front of mind if you're an in-house counsel."

Nonetheless, in an economic climate where many businesses are under severe pressure, there's great openness to new revenue streams, particularly rooted in existing assets.

But in addition to working together on identifying valuable legacy patents, the two organizations also aim to collaborate on patent development and prosecution.

"The clients we're trying to work most closely with are those that have developed or want to develop significant patent portfolios," said Woolley, who's based in Polsinelli's Kansas City, Missouri, office.

Unlike the litigation services agreement, under which Polsinelli has rebadged a "handful" of its own litigation support employees to UnitedLex, there's no transfer of personnel here.

"This is more about the organizations bringing together their respective strengths and working together in tandem," Woolley said.

And while the litigation agreement is set to last a minimum of five years, the IP tie-up does not have a fixed term.

"We're totally open-ended," Dearing said.

UnitedLex's latest deal with Polsinelli comes just a few months after the company announced another law firm venture: a partnership with Magic Circle firm Ashurst in Germany focused on investigations. Its most high-profile partnership with a traditional law firm unravelled last summer, when Am Law 200 firm LeClairRyan closed its doors in the wake of partner defections and declining revenues.

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