The lessons from FICPI Focus 45’s milestone episode go well beyond IP: they’re a reminder of why trusted relationships sit at the heart of effective practice.
When the phone rings unexpectedly these days, many of us jump. It’s a small symptom of something larger: the way professional life has quietly rewired itself around video calls, asynchronous messages, and the steady hum of screens.
Yet when the FICPI Focus 45 webinar series reached its 45th episode, co-host Louis-Pierre Gravelle and Eastern-timezone host Ronelle Geldenhuys made a compelling case that what independent IP attorneys actually need from their professional community hasn’t changed at all. We all need real conversation, genuine connection, and colleagues who will listen.
That theme runs through the episode like a thread. The FICPI Focus 45 initiative was born during the Covid-19 pandemic precisely because FICPI recognised that a PowerPoint presentation with a Q&A tacked on the end wasn’t enough. Members needed real conversations, not dull monologues.
The importance of being present in the conversation
Some of the conversations in the series have been technically demanding: patent reform in the United States, IP policy engagement with national Offices, the practicalities of AI drafting tools.
Others have been unexpectedly human. Louis-Pierre, who has hosted the series from the start, highlights one episode above all others: a conversation recorded in 2023, not long after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in which four Ukrainian lawyers described what it meant to practice IP law under bombardment. One had stayed in Kyiv because her mother refused to leave, the interviewee shared: “Having to face threats of bombs and drones and power outages and food supply limits all the time… completely changed my perspective on how people continue to do what they’re supposed to do professionally in very difficult environments.”
That episode, Louis-Pierre says, illustrated something he has come to think of as fundamental to the FICPI Focus 45 series: FICPI members don’t all share the same circumstances, pressures, or contexts. They come from jurisdictions with different legal cultures, different relationships with IP Offices, different professional pressures, and, in some cases, dramatically different personal realities. Effective IP practice across borders requires more than legal knowledge. It requires emotional intelligence and sensitivity.
And listening, Louis-Pierre notes, turns out to be a skill that has to be practised:
“To really listen to what the other person is saying and how they’re saying it allows you to have a better conversation.”
The difference between preparing a list of questions and working through them mechanically, versus following a conversation wherever it genuinely leads, is the difference between an interview and a discussion. It is also, he suggests, the notable improvement between a transactional professional relationship and one built on trust.
That distinction matters enormously for the episodes that have generated the strongest audience response, and perhaps surprisingly, those are not the technical ones.
The FICPI Focus 45 episodes on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility have consistently attracted the highest download numbers. Louis-Pierre reads that not as a trend, but as confirmation that the profession has already shifted:
“We’re not all made out of the same mould, and that’s not a bad thing.”
FICPI’s role, as he sees it, is not to impose positions but to gather experience from across its global community and give it the visibility it deserves.
Adopting new practices and tools
The same logic applies to Artificial Intelligence. The mood around AI drafting tools has shifted markedly even within the past year, from scepticism to reluctant acknowledgement of inevitability.
Ronelle is candid about the anxiety many practitioners feel: a conservative profession, already managing the pace of DEIA change, is now being asked to absorb rapidly evolving technology at the same time.
Her framing is practical and honest:
“You have to try, you’ll get it wrong, the tools will change again before you’ve fully learned them. What matters is having somewhere safe to work through that discomfort.”
Louis-Pierre adds,
"FICPI provides a safe place, not only to canvas what best practices are, but to say to colleagues: I’m having some issues with this. This is complicated. How do you feel?"
Ronelle adds that a practical AI Patent Drafting Masterclass for members is in development, focused not on whether to engage, but on which tools practitioners are actually using and how they compare. That is FICPI doing what it does best: turning shared concern into shared knowledge.
Since this episode aired, bookings for the FICPI AI Patent Drafting Masterclass in September 2026 have launched, find out more at: https://ficpi.org/ficpi-ai-patent-drafting-masterclass-2026
The importance of relationships
After 45 episodes, the underlying message of FICPI Focus 45 is consistent: the work of independent IP attorneys is important, and doing it well depends on relationships built across borders and on insight shared between peers.
FICPI’s standing with IP Offices around the world gives its members a platform that individual practitioners rarely have alone.
Louis-Pierre puts it simply:
“We are driven, across this community, by a desire to help. That desire, to help clients, to help colleagues, to help the profession, is what drives FICPI membership and what makes the conversations in this series worth having.”
FICPI’s view
The FICPI community is built on trusted, global relationships. It uniquely combines education and advocacy on topics around patents and trade marks, with a focus on developing the professional excellence of its individual member who are independent IP attorneys from across the world. The FICPI community is driven by a strong shared interest among like-minded people to promote common solutions and advocacy for private practice.
Next steps
- FICPI members may log in to the FICPI website to view the recording of this episode from 22 January 2026 at: https://ficpi.org/on-demand.
- Audio-only versions of the episodes are available to any interested parties across major podcast platforms – search for ‘FICPI Focus 45’.
- Find out what webinars are upcoming at: https://ficpi.org/eventstraining/upcoming-webinars
This article was generated by AI using careful prompts from our Communications Committee, review from our IP attorney Editorial Board, and editing from our expert editor.