On October 20, In-House Connect, Foley & Lardner, and Patlytics brought in-house counsel and fractional GCs together at Foley's Boston office for Under the Hood: How AI Is Changing Patent Work and What It Means for In-House Counsel. Christopher McKenna, Partner at Foley & Lardner, and Nash Ream, Customer Success Lead at Patlytics, gave the room an inside look at how Foley, a Patlytics customer and co-design partner, put AI to work across its patent practice.

Key Takeaways

• Process comes before platform: Foley mapped its best practices across 150+ practitioners before choosing an AI platform.
• Workflows beat prompts: repeatable workflows with the right context produce consistent quality across a team.
• Human first, human last: attorneys own every output, and transparency about how the work was done builds trust.
• In-house counsel should expect more value, not a race to the bottom: lower costs, more value at the same price, or a new way to collaborate.

1. Process Before Platform

Before choosing a platform, Chris spent about a year mapping Foley's best practices across more than 150 practitioners. Foley's IP department nicknamed the effort T5, covering tools, techniques, training, and technology. Foley is now a co-design partner with Patlytics, and the two teams meet weekly.

2. Workflows Beat Prompts

Asking AI to "write me a patent application" doesn't work. Five people will write five different prompts and get five different results. The fix is structured workflows that bring the right context to each step.

3. Pick the Right Projects

Most AI projects fail because they're aimed at the wrong problem. Foley started with the two workflows it repeats most: patent applications and office action responses.

4. Three Stages of Adoption

First, AI assists, so teams do today's work faster. Then it augments, making work affordable that wasn't before, like European support on US applications. Finally, it enables new ways for in-house and outside counsel to work together.

5. Human First, Human Last

The attorney owns the output and reviews it. Trust also depends on transparency: when someone says they did the work in AI, Chris's response is "I need to see a prompt."

6. The Strategic Upside

Portfolio white-space analysis can now take a day instead of weeks, and a first-pass IP assessment can start from a startup's pitch deck.

7. What In-House Counsel Should Expect

The payoff can take three forms: lower costs, more value at the same price, or a new way of collaborating with outside counsel. It shouldn't become a race to the bottom.

The evening gave the Patlytics team a direct line into what in-house patent leaders expect from AI and from the firms that use it on their behalf. Thank you to Chris McKenna and the Foley & Lardner team for hosting, to In-House Connect for partnering with us, and to everyone who joined the conversation. Stay tuned for our next session.

Watch the full conversation: Under the Hood: How AI Is Changing Patent Work →