New IP Boutique's Sassy Website Urges Potential Clients to 'Reject Convention,' Disses BigLaw
Saying that they can do a better job for clients as a small intellectual property boutique than the BigLaw firms from whence they came, seven lawyers from DLA Piper and Mayer Brown, including at least two who were partners at their former firms, have hung out their own shingle in Palo Alto, Calif.
Led by former Mayer Brown partner Ian Feinberg and former DLA Piper partner Elizabeth Day, the seven identify themselves as a group of what some consider “mavericks and renegades” on the website for their new firm, Feinberg Day Alberti & Thompson. It urges prospective clients to “reject convention and select a better solution.” That solution is, of course, Feinberg Day.
The site describes the new boutique as “a collective of seven partners that together represent the future of IP law and how it will be practiced. We reject the notion that big firms provide better legal service. We know because every single Feinberg Day partner began his or her career at one,” says the group, which includes six former DLA Piper lawyers.
“We’ve changed all that by assembling deeply experienced, intensely passionate attorneys dedicated to developing and efficiently executing the best objective-based solution,” continues the site’s description of the new venture. “We are Feinberg Day.”
Under the banner “reject convention,” the firm goes on to describe the advantage it says it can offer clients, as an alternative to what it calls an “outdated and inefficient” conventional approach to IP litigation.
A collaborative team of lawyers familiar with the client’s business, technology and legal issues works with the client “to create the best solution and work passionately to deliver on that objective,” the site says. It touts the firm’s “holistic and comprehensive perspective,” and says that legal matters should be thought of as business matters that need to be strategized in accord with each client’s needs.
Having no “managerial hierarchy,” quotas or “staid policies,” the firm is “able to entirely focus on the objective of each of our clients,” its lawyers say in the website description, adding that “our personal experiences have exposed us to the inefficiencies and deficiencies of large law firms.”
The Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal reports that the new firm says its clients include Adobe Systems Inc., Apple Inc., Trident Microsystems Inc. and Palm Inc., owned by Hewlett-Packard Co.
Feinberg and Day did not immediately respond to interview requests by the ABA Journal.
