We are delighted to be working with our client who are looking for someone to join them in their professional and friendly office on a permanent basis. This is an opportunity for an IP professional with a high level of knowledge and experience in a variety of IP Processes. The role will involve undertaking work, including QA, at a high complexity level within at least one of our four main IPSS work teams and to a medium level of complexity in at least one of the remaining three. You will also be responsible for checking and training more administrative tasks across multiple work teams within the IPSS department. You will need to be able to work at pace and juggle multiple priorities. A commitment to producing high quality work for yourself and others is essential.
Key Responsibilities:
- Updating the firms IP portfolio management system to record details of IP cases and key information from correspondence, including official due dates.
- Notifying IP attorneys and other staff within the firm that correspondence has been received.
- Monitoring both internal and official due dates and ensuring necessary tasks are completed in a timely fashion.
- Using own initiative to produce high quality written communication, including internal correspondence and correspondence to clients and external agents. In addition, supporting others in the team to produce high quality communications.
- Preparing, filing, renewing and validating patent, trade mark, design (and other IP rights) applications and registrations. This will involve dealing with the Patent/Trade Mark office either directly, via foreign agents or via intermediaries.
- Taking a proactive approach with liaising with IP attorneys, other staff, and external agents in order to complete the actions outlined above. Supporting and encouraging others in the team to take a proactive approach.
- Assisting coordinator with the assignment of work to others, updating statistics on and monitoring work queues (anticipating change and planning accordingly) throughout the day, allocating/delegating tasks to team members to ensure SLA and turnaround times are adhered to, preparing scrum meeting updates for their allocated work team, checking anomaly reports, investigating and reporting issues arising with suggested solutions for remedy.
- Training and mentoring others in your own allocated work team and in a 2nd work team.
- Assisting management with identifying training needs and delivering training within their allocated work team and a 2nd work team to ensure there is enough support and cover for colleagues when required. Deputising for coordinators if needed.
- Proactively identifying where firm wide practices and procedural guidelines are not been followed and work with the relevant individuals/teams to resolve
- Providing timely and appropriate feedback on checked work and training progress both to the individual and to management.
- Leading or assisting with the development of workflows, process guides and training materials
- Liaising with the management team regarding suppliers e.g. monitoring service levels on day-to-day basis, providing feedback to management, participating in service review meetings etc.
- Generating routine and adhoc client specific reports as and when requested.
- Responding to more detailed client enquiries and mentoring others in the team on drafting responses.
- Assisting with responses to client service issues, e.g. investigating issues, identifying solutions, preparing responses, escalating issues to IPSS coordinators/management as and when appropriate etc.
Person Specification
- Extensive experience of working in an IP support function, ideally gained within an IP attorney firm. Including:
- Maintaining Case Records and Deadlines
- Processing official correspondence
- Handling and forwarding incoming correspondence from clients and foreign associate firms.
- Checking and QA of above work initially processed by other individuals.
- Acts as a role model with a strong commitment to high levels of service to internal and external clients taking accountability for the role the individual and team plays in the delivery of service excellence
- Experience of buddying, training and overseeing the work of others is preferred.
- Excellent working knowledge of patent, design and/or trade mark formalities, ideally with CIPA/CITMA Administrator’s Certificate/s with an openness to continue personal professional development
- In-depth understanding of:
- IP portfolio management systems (ideally Inprotech), including some understanding of how underlying these systems are configured with underlying rules.
- Document management systems (ideally iManage).
- Good understanding of the inherent risks within the management of IP and of ways to mitigate these.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including to contacts within key client accounts. Confident at initiating communication with a variety of different stakeholders in different situations
- Ability to build relationships in teams/individuals which are working in a hybrid environment
- Proven ability to work to deadlines and under pressure and effective at delegation of tasks within teams if required.
- A positive attitude and the ability to help lead and motivate a team effectively to deliver a high performance / high quality service.
- Ability to see consequential impact across the firm and on clients.
- Ability to work with confidentiality and discretion.
In addition, any experience in the following is beneficial, but not essential:
- Project work, including the implementation of new services, new IT systems and process change across a firm.