‘Exceeding expectations’: A day in the life of a paralegal

Welcome to the latest instalment of Managing IP’s ‘Five minutes with’ series, where we learn more about intellectual property practitioners, or those working in the IP profession, on a personal and professional level. This time, we meet Åsa Gustafson, global patent paralegal manager at Zacco.

I tell them I work in IP. Then, when they inevitably ask, I spend the next few minutes explaining what IP is and how they probably interact with it every day. Once they’re excited about IP, I explain that I drive our patent paralegal strategy across Scandinavia, the UK, Germany and India, together with an expert team of managers.

Managing our amazing team of patent paralegals across the Zacco group means that I spend a lot of time developing and streamlining the way that we work and making sure the team have everything they need to succeed.

Our role is to support colleagues and clients with a range of legal and administrative tasks, everything from legal research and regulatory updates to drafting contracts and managing global IP portfolios. I also handle a large portfolio of patent cases, primarily involving European patent applications for our international clients. One minute you might be on the phone with the EPO, then sending an email to someone in the US, then discussing a new case with someone in Brazil.

Every day is a little bit different, but that keeps it exciting.

We’re currently handling the takeover of the global portfolio for a new client. This means onboarding all cases, rights and other IP assets onto our system, ensuring we have the right team in place who understand the local legislation and can support the client as they move into new markets. We’re also holding an internal patent conference in Gothenburg in October, so it’s always fun to meet patent managers and paralegals from across the group in person.

There is a lot going on, and it’s usually juggling multiple things, but with one or two big things in the mix, just to keep us busy. It often depends on the day, but it could be anything from ensuring that a patent right is registered correctly in local markets, to helping a client create a territory map to identify gaps in their IP coverage. We also need to stay ahead of changing legislation and legal developments, especially when countries can change their rules at short notice, so it’s important to keep up with training, education and knowledge sharing within the teams. The intention is always to exceed clients’ expectations.

I really love knowledge sharing and trying to lift my colleagues in the patent paralegal team. Most of us genuinely love what we do, so learning about new aspects of it can be a lot of fun. I keep up to date through external education, and I run training sessions for colleagues, competitors, clients and others in industry, mostly around the EP process from filing to grant, oppositions and appeals.

As for stressful, well it’s probably the nature of the role that things can come in that need to be dealt with immediately or at short notice. Fortunately, these are rare, but when a multimillion-dollar patent is at risk of revocation, then you usually need to drop everything. So those, and having too many meetings without gaps to actually get stuff done, that’s also pretty stressful.

A successful paralegal is a person who knows the client and prioritises accordingly. They should understand what level to meet the client at and what matters most to them in terms of their portfolio. Knowledge and sharing that knowledge are also integral to success, so the role requires you to be a team player. Curiosity is also helpful, having a desire to learn and keep updated on changes makes the job a lot easier.

As I’m sure others have said, most people believe that a patent is both global and lasts forever. Neither of which is unfortunately true, but I think another common misconception is that a patent can be kept secret. Obviously, trade secrets are an option for some, but if you want a patent, then it has to be published, and we sometimes need to explain that.

Patents protect innovation, but they are also designed to encourage it; that’s part of the ‘promise’, so others have to be able to see your work and potentially improve on it, if you don’t improve on it first, of course!

Day to day, I have to say my colleagues inspire me. I’m lucky to be able to say that I love my job, the work that I do and the people that I work with. There’s a lot of expertise and enthusiasm, and we have a lot of young colleagues too, so plenty of opportunity to teach, to learn and to mentor. For more general inspiration, I would have to say that I am always amazed by professional athletes or musicians. The energy, the level of commitment to both training and self-improvement, the sheer force of willpower, all of it inspires differently.

Weaving rugs. I am so jealous of those people who get to spend their time making beautiful rugs. Some of these are true works of art, with a price tag to match, but just the thought of sitting amongst a collection of 200 colours of yarn and wondering what to create next would be amazing.

I also love fabrics and love buying fabrics, so anything creative within these areas would have been fun. My focus is on constant improvement, rather than restarting, which might go some way to explaining how I found a role working with innovators and brands.

A cross-country or downhill skier could also be a possibility.

You are good as you are; there is nothing to prove. There are only 24 hours in a day, so it’s important to remember the things that you have accomplished, rather than the things you haven’t been able to get around to.

In the end, I enjoy it when things are busy, and this is advice that I have been following for many years now, but I still wish I had known it sooner.

Treat others as you would have them treat you… It’s simple but incredibly effective because it helps you to approach everything from a pragmatic perspective. It means don’t be a pushover, help to lift others, and always remember to see people for who they are and understand that they might approach things differently.