You Built a Practice.
You Don’t Have to Walk Away From It.
IP Of Counsel helps established intellectual property attorneys explore a gradual transition from practice — while creating continuity for the clients and relationships they have spent decades building.
Attorney-to-attorney·Confidential·No obligation
What Happens to Your Practice When You’re Ready to Slow Down?
Most established IP attorneys eventually face a version of the same question. Not whether they can afford to slow down, but what becomes of the practice itself — the clients, the institutional knowledge, the referral relationships built over twenty or thirty years.
The usual answers are blunt. Keep running the firm indefinitely. Sell to a platform with no particular interest in intellectual property. Or simply wind down, refer clients elsewhere, and close the door on something that took a career to build.
None of those are wrong, exactly. They are just incomplete.
There Is Another Option Between Full-Time Practice and Retirement.
Joining an established IP platform can allow an attorney to gradually transition — continuing to practice at a level that makes sense, introducing clients to a broader team over time, and reducing administrative responsibility long before deciding on a retirement date. It is not a faster off-ramp. It is a different road.
There Is No Single Required Structure.
Keep Practicing
Continue doing the legal work you are good at, without also running a law firm — the billing, staffing, insurance, and technology that come with it.
Reduce Your Hours
Maintain a substantial workload now and scale it back gradually, on a timeline that reflects your own plans rather than an arbitrary date.
Focus on Relationships
Stay closely involved with the clients who matter most, while day-to-day prosecution, docketing, and administration are handled by others.
Build Toward Retirement
Begin introducing clients to a broader team well before you intend to step back, so the transition happens in years rather than overnight.
Your practice is more than a book of business. Long-term clients trusted you with their businesses, their inventions, their brands — sometimes across generations of company leadership. A succession plan should respect that.
Built for Established IP Practitioners
This opportunity is primarily intended for experienced intellectual property attorneys with established client relationships who are beginning to think about the next stage of their practice.
We are selective because client fit, professional reputation, practice quality, and long-term compatibility matter.
- Solo IP attorneys with an established practice
- Partners considering leaving a smaller firm
- Patent prosecutors with longstanding corporate clients
- Trademark and IP practitioners with recurring portfolios
- Attorneys planning a transition several years in advance
- Attorneys who want to keep practicing without continuing to run a firm
A Deliberate Process, Not an Application
Confidential Conversation
We discuss your goals, your practice, your clients, and the timeline you have in mind. Nothing more.
Explore Fit
Together, we consider whether your practice and the Fargo Patent Law platform appear compatible.
Design a Transition
If it makes sense to continue, we develop a structure suited to you, your clients, and your timeline.
Transition Gradually
Clients and responsibilities integrate over time, with you involved at the level you have agreed to.
No client relationship is transferred automatically. Every arrangement remains subject to client choice and applicable Rules of Professional Conduct.
An Established IP Firm Behind the Transition
IP Of Counsel is not a recruiter, a private equity roll-up, or a lead-generation service. It is backed by Fargo Patent Law, an operating intellectual property firm with experience across patent prosecution and strategy, trademarks, IP agreements, portfolio strategy, and ongoing IP counsel to businesses and innovators.
The emphasis is on an IP-focused, business-minded practice built to support client relationships over the long term — not simply to acquire a book of business.
Learn more about Fargo Patent Law →- IP-focused practice, not a general litigation shop
- Infrastructure to support ongoing client service
- Business-minded, long-term orientation
- An operating law firm — not a broker or staffing agency
You Can Explore the Idea Without Making a Decision.
Contacting IP Of Counsel does not mean you have decided to retire, leave your firm, or transition your clients. Initial conversations are exploratory — a way to understand what a transition could look like, years before any decision needs to be made.
We understand that succession discussions can be sensitive, and we treat initial conversations accordingly.
Maybe Retirement Is Five Years Away.
That’s Exactly Why It May Be Worth Talking Now.
The best transitions do not happen overnight. If you have built an IP practice and are beginning to think about what comes next, we would be interested in learning more about you and your practice.
Start a Confidential Conversation