An Intellectual Property Law Firm Business Plan

This thesis serves as a business plan for an intellectual property law firm, Starr PLLC. The intellectual property law firm is intended to be started by two attorneys with 10+ years of experience. It is believed that the firm will be more profitable during the start-up phase if begun by attorneys with previous experience rather than recent law school graduates. Starr PLLC will gear its intellectual property services towards small business owners in the greater Phoenix area. Many small business owners seek intellectual property legal services from large firms where they do not to receive the service they deserve. Large law firms have several clients and often make themselves more available for larger well-known clients rather than small business owners. The needs of a small business owner often come in second to the needs of well-known clients. Additionally, small business owners are typically stuck with an inexperienced attorney handling a majority of their case when they use the services of a large law firm. Starr PLLC wants to change this by making small business owners the focus of its services and ensuring that their cases are handled by an experienced attorney. Starr PLLC would like to eventually expand to a mid-size firm with 30 \u2014 50 attorneys. Networking and marketing will be important to achieving that growth. For this thesis, current small business owners were interviewed and asked what they look for when seeking legal services. Half of the small business owners who were interviewed had sought intellectual property legal services prior to the interview and the other half had not. This allowed for insight from both types of clients. Additionally, several attorneys and the marketing director of a law firm were interviewed to gain insight regarding the operations of a pre-existing firm. The founding partner of a law firm was also interviewed and provided information on the many challenges that one must overcome to start a successful law firm. This business plan was structured around the responses received during these interviews as well as the ones previously mentioned.