FICPI’s Practice Management Committee (PMC, also known as the Professional Excellence Committee and shortened to PEC) focuses on how intellectual property attorneys do business as IP firms and thus complements the work carried out by FICPI’s Study and Work Committee (known by its French acronym, CET), which looks at the laws and the offices that we deal with daily.
PMC was established in 2008 to deal with matters of professional practice, with the objective of maintaining the standards of the IP profession to the highest level and further developing them, in addition to FICPI committees focusing on patent and trade mark issues already in FICPI.
PMC aims to provide information and guidance to FICPI members about practice management, to support firms in their everyday business life and development.
Therefore, PMC organises the Practice Management stream of FICPI’s educational meetings, such as its Open Forums, including sessions on the profession as a business.
PMC takes the lead in matters of continuing professional development, the promotion of standards and best practices, and the profession as a business. PMC helps by identifying trends in the profession and IP marketplace as well as challenges in the profession, and offers targeted advice.
It also deals with practical issues relating to IP asset management, IP valuation, litigation insurance and the like.
PMC is organised into working groups and any member is free to raise any issue that might be of concern to them and of interest to other firms.
Some of the current PMC working groups are:
- Reaction against the new competition from service providers (BRACE)
- Pricing methods and fee structure
- IP valuation
- IP practice management benchmarking questionnaire
- Best practices when automating workflow in an IP firm
- Profit generation in IP firms
PMC has also produced publications such as "Guidelines for Engagement Letters", “Guidelines for Communications between IP Firms” and its “Report on Six Sigma Projects in IP Law Firms”. FICPI's library of IP Practice Management Guides is available to all members.
Any member of FICPI is welcome to join PMC, share their knowledge and experience, present on a specific topic, or raise any current issue and discuss it with colleagues who might encounter the same concerns.
