Baker McKenzie In New Tech Partnership, This Time For IP

Global law firm Baker McKenzie is partnering with IP company MaxVal to provide clients with an intellectual property platform. The move follows an earlier partnership deal with AI company SparkBeyond, which has explored the idea of predicting client needs via machine learning, among other things.

Using the tech company’s IP management system, Symphony, Baker McKenzie will extend its ‘functionality … to deploy a modern, intuitive and intelligent IP management solution’ they said.

The firm explained that its combined solution will encompass ‘not only technology, but also the legal expertise and scale that Baker McKenzie brings to trademarks and IP more widely’. This initiative is part of Baker McKenzie’s global innovation strategy, known as Reinvent.

All well and good. But, it’s not the first law firm to develop an IP platform, with or without a third-party vendor. So, is this a big deal?

They added that the firm is already ‘one of the world’s largest brand management practices, managing over 670,000 trademarks’. So, in that regard this could have a notable impact.

We’ll have to see if clients appreciate the new initiative. Either way it underlines that Baker McKenzie is continuing its investment in tech, as well as partnerships, for the delivery of services to its clients.

Ben Allgrove, Partner and Chief Innovation Officer at Baker McKenzie, said: ‘Last year we announced our exclusive partnership with leading AI platform SparkBeyond, and this partnership with MaxVal is a further long-term investment for us in using artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to deliver the future of legal services.’