Phillip Pippenger

Kevin Daisey:
All right, we are recording. Hello everyone. This is Kevin Daisey, the host today of the live Managing Partners Podcast. I also am the founder of Array Digital, where we exist to help law firms get found in search, get more leads, get more traffic, and grow their pipeline. So if you need that kind of help, please reach out to me or one of my associates. So today on The Managing Partners Podcast, I have Phillip, and Phillip’s coming out of Atlanta, but he runs a practice, mostly based out of Chicago, where most of his clients are. But Phillip, thanks so much for joining me today.

Phillip:
Hey, thanks for having me, Kevin. It’s great to be here.

Kevin Daisey:
Yes, sir. Well, we had a little bit of technical issues, little audio issues, but thank… We have cell phones and we were to figure this out. So sorry about that, but we got you here. So we got to talk a little bit before the podcast here, so I got to know a little bit more about you. But I’m excited to have the audience know more about your journey to get to where you are today and how that panned out for you and then really getting into some of the specialties and things that you do for your clients.

Phillip:
Okay.

Kevin Daisey:
So I guess let’s just start it. I mean, you didn’t start out as an attorney and even though it’s, I guess, a part of your family, but yeah, tell us a little bit of the story about how you got into this work and became an attorney.

Phillip:
All right. Well, I guess the [inaudible 00:01:35] man, I’m a patent attorney and also general intellectual property, so trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets. We’re a technology practice. So we’re engineers and physicists and chemists and, there’s only two of us, but we spread the qualifications among us. So that’s my brother and we’re McKinney Phillips.

Phillip:
So the way I got here, in high school, I was always intrigued with physics and chemistry a little bit, electronics, acoustics, NASA, every everything cool in the engineering and physics world. And my father, at the time was a patent attorney himself. He was a chemist who had gone to law school and had worked inside corporations, pursuing their patents and their defense against patents, and all that sort of stuff for his entire career. He’s retired now, but at the time, I was seeking a little bit of direction and my dad said, “Well, you always ask me great questions and you know a lot about engineering, so you’d be a great patent attorney.”

Phillip:
And I didn’t have any other direction at that point, and that sounded pretty good. I like analysis and questions and discussion and debate and engineering. So I went to Westland University for physics and math and met my wife there. At that time, I transferred out to Caltech for a couple of years, and did electrical engineering. Then the two of us went over to Rice, in Houston, Texas. I did a master’s of science and quantum electronics there, and I was in the PhD program and I decided… We wanted to get married and I decided I need to get moving on my patent attorney plan. So, I left with a master’s. Wrote and defended my thesis, did my research, and ended up at Cornell Law School. And in ’98, I popped out of there, didn’t know too much more than what I’d learned at my various institutions, but I was ready to go.

Phillip:
So I started. I had worked a couple of summers at a Chicago law firm, and I started there full time in ’98. Was a partner there a few years after that, and stayed at that firm until 2011.

Kevin Daisey:
Wow.

Phillip:

And in 2011, or just shortly before 2011, some former alumni of that firm and from another firm as well, started their own practice, Miller, Matthias & Hull. So that was Tom Miller, Brent Matthias and Michael Hull, who’s passed away now. So I joined up with them and it was a great experience. It was this small firm, four partners. Mike eventually left and we brought in a new partner. But after a while, I still wanted to do more of my own practice, more hardcore high-tech prosecution, so I left in 2019 to start McKinney Phillips.

Phillip:
My brother works … me in that firm. So between us… He’s a chemist, a chemical engineer. He does everything from plant patents to solvents, to fire retardants. Right now he’s doing a lot of work in concrete. I handle the mechanical engineering in the firm, as well as the electronics, electrical, computer engineering, telecommunications, data processing and analysis, and pretty much every… If you invent a cool new go-kart or a cool new vaccine or a new cell phone app, we pretty much have the technology, know how to handle it. He’s from UPenn, Cornell undergrad, UPenn grad school and Vanderbilt Law. And so we try to cover the waterfront.

Phillip:
We do have folks we work with in this country and other countries when the client needs something other than specifically what we can give. We also, because we’re small and obviously we don’t have much overhead.

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah.

Phillip:
I’m talking to you from my office at home right now. We had very, I wouldn’t even say competitive rates, I mean, we’re pretty much below everybody because there’s no middleman. It’s just the two of us. And we do all the work. We do all the drafting. We do, in terms of pre-litigation, and cease and desist letters and infringement letters and things like that. I handle those on my side. I’ve had a lot of litigation experience in the past and intellectual property trade secret trademark. So the only thing we really don’t do is [inaudible 00:06:31] litigation, but we will work with local counsel to get that done.

Kevin Daisey:
Awesome.

Phillip:
So that’s kind of the path to where we are now.

Kevin Daisey:
And so this is the website here below mckinneyphillips.com, if you’re just listening, mckinneyphillips.com, but you take a look at that site. So you’ve gone through some different transitions, and I think, just asking you, how many patent attorneys have… I know a few and I’ve talked to quite a bit more, especially on this show, how many happened to also have been an engineer first?

Phillip:
A lot have some kind of scientific training. You have to have a little bit. There’s two kinds of patent attorneys. You could be a patent attorney who’s registered with, obviously a state bar but also the United States Patent and Trademark Office to pursue patents and things like that. You don’t have to be registered with them to pursue trademarks, but if you want to be a patent attorney, then you have to pass a test with them and have certain minimal technical qualifications.

Kevin Daisey:
Okay.

Phillip:
So for example-

Kevin Daisey:
That’s good to know.

Phillip:
Yeah. So for example, a mathematics degree, you would have to turn in some extra proof if that was your degree and you want it to be a patent attorney. Computer scientist as well, or though computer engineering, you can sit for the exam and get registered. I can’t remember what the question was, Kevin, but anyway that’s-

Kevin Daisey:
I was just wondering how many patent attorneys out there really have a true engineering degree and background.

Phillip:
You know, predominantly, it’s people who were in engineering. Not too many people plan it out though, the way I did and Rob did. Usually it’s people who got into engineering, were okay at it, but really weren’t as good as they wanted to be, or didn’t enjoy it as much as they could have, and decided, “Well, I have this engineering degree. I don’t want to do engineering. What can I do?” So technology law, and in particular patent law, if they want to sit for the bar for that is a good route.

Phillip:
To be a good patent attorney, you still have to be a good scientist and a good engineer, because a lot of times, the client… When you work with a client, you’re really working with inventors, engineers, technically savvy people, and you have to be able to speak their language, understand what’s interesting and different about what they’re telling you as opposed to just saying, “Wow, that’s cool. That’s neat how that works.” You have to be able to determine what’s been going on before, where the eureka is and what they have and help them find more, if you can. That’s part of the job is to brainstorm with them and say, “Well can you do it this way? Can you do it that way? How about this option?”

Phillip:
So in order to do that all properly, you really want to come from a pretty solid engineering background. A full background, before you go into patent law, especially if you’re prosecuting.

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah, makes a lot of sense, they need to understand-

Phillip:
If you’re litigating, you don’t need as much technical background, but you should probably work with somebody who does have that technical background.

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah, really cool. Yeah, just wasn’t sure about that, and I would assume they needed to have that background and understand, because you’re coming across a lot of different products, inventions, whatever it may be. So you got to be able to have the conversations with these folks-

Phillip:
Right. Right.

Kevin Daisey:
… and not look like you’re a deer in headlights. Like, “What?”

Phillip:
Yeah. Right, and I think if you’re going to be in a small firm, by yourself or in a small group in a larger general firm, you probably should be the kind of person who can fix your own brakes and tune up your engine and things like that. Just have a general understanding of engineering and mechanics because my background, a lot of what I’ve done is software apps, telecommunications. But I’ve also done new braces. I’ve done lawn mower technology, recognized as. So you have to be a technical quick study and then it’s a fun job for you.

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah. That;’s awesome. Yeah. Me, something, I’m a marketer, started out as a web developer. We did software development for quite a lot too. As well, application development. But at the same time, I’m very handy, mechanically inclined. Work on stuff, build stuff. I love doing all that stuff. Not to say I can be a patent attorney, that’s not happening.

Phillip:
Well, if you had a degree with that kind of a mindset, if you had a degree, you could go be a patent attorney.

Kevin Daisey:
All right. I’m getting off the show. I’m going to go. No, it’s good. I’m not that smart. But so they’re really cool. Cool, and you told me a cool story was about the golf course and who was-

Phillip:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Daisey:
[crosstalk 00:11:16] again, yeah.

Phillip:
I mentioned that we’ve got… My father’s a patent attorney, and now I am, and my brother is. My sister escaped and she’s a doctor, but there’s three patent-

Kevin Daisey:
Very powerful family, right there. Daughters and lawyers.

Phillip:
But there’s-

Kevin Daisey:
[crosstalk 00:11:31] proud.

Phillip:
It’s neat that we’ve got three patent attorneys and it all came from a chance meeting. My dad had, when he was in college, he was a caddy, on a golf course in Galesburg, Illinois. He was going to Knox College there, and he caddied for this guy who seemed really, really well put together and articulate and in command. And my dad said, “Hey, I’m just in college. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m a chemistry major. I mean, what do you do?”

Phillip:
And the guy said, “Oh, I’m a patent attorney. I work in house for XYZ company. I’m their patent counsel.” And right then my dad said, “That sounds good. That’s what I want to do. What do I do?” And the guy said, “Finish up and go to law school and go in house.” So his whole career, my dad was in house and he eventually was a chief patent counsel at a large chemical company, and now he’s retired. But it spawned a couple other patent attorneys, me and my brother. None of my kids are going that way, so it ends here.

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah, so the guy was like, “Yeah, you have the science part down. Just got to add the other element.” [crosstalk 00:12:34]

Phillip:
Go to law school, and a lot of people go to law school without the technical background, just maybe they’re a history major or a philosophy major. An English major, and they don’t know what to do with the degree, so they go to law school and get into… They could be any kind of attorney. You could be an immigration attorney, having once been an English major. Law school teaches you everything you need to know about your area of law, at least to get started.

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah. Excellent. Okay. Well, our next question, really. On your own, McKinney Phillips, I think you mentioned you just did that recently, like 2019, 2020?

Phillip:
2019. May or June of 2019. Sorry. Yeah.

Kevin Daisey:
Awesome. So I’m sure you had plenty of connections and you know a lot of people in the industry, but what’s been really something that’s worked well for you to get clients, and the clients you have now versus how you’re getting new clients? And then how many cases are you guys actually taking on? What’s your, I guess, your capacity at this point?

Phillip:
Yeah. Well, when I was working at my prior firm, when I was a partner there, the clients I worked with were larger clients with high volume and we had associates and people to help with all that, and high volume was fine. We’re more of a bespoke firm now, I guess, if you want to use that lingo, in that we can’t really handle high volume. If a company wanted a hundred patent applications a year, just to crank them out, then that’s not us. But if they have 5 or 10, and it’s their crown jewels, then we’re the folks, because we can do that work, especially well. The reason we don’t have high bandwidth is we don’t have associates. My brother and I are the drafters. So if you get a letter from McKinney Phillips, it’s from one of us. If there’s a patent drafted by McKinney Phillips, it’s drafted by one of us.

Kevin Daisey:
It’s bespoke. I like that.

Phillip:
Yeah. So, I kept the smaller clients that I had when I was at the prior firm, because they were certainly within the range of our capabilities, volume wise.

Kevin Daisey:
Gotcha.

Phillip:
Some of the mid-sized clients, we still work with. The larger ones, I didn’t take with me, just because by myself, and even with my brother, we wouldn’t be able to just dedicate ourselves to one client. And since then actually, we’ve gotten a lot of industrial clients. There’s an industrial community of mid-size entities that know each other and refer each other.

Kevin Daisey:
Gotcha.

Phillip:
From knowing just a handful of people, a couple of folks from the very first firm I was at, and a couple of neat clients, it’s all been word of mouth for the past few years now. Clients I had never heard of when I started this firm are now major clients here. That said, we didn’t have a structured marketing strategy. We planned on word of mouth and just let our performance speak for us. But it’d be good, it would be good if we did have an organized approach to marketing. Maybe a little less exciting and explosive at times, but as we age here as a firm, we’ll probably go more that direction.

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah. I mean, honestly, it’s, starting out, and you’ve been doing this for a long time so you had some connections, but that’s the natural way to go, is you’ve got connections, you know people, you get referrals, you build, you use the word of mouth as much as you can until you feel it’s necessary to take the next step, and that’s… That again, that’s natural, I think, and makes sense. You do get work, you’re going to get more referrals.

Phillip:
One aspect of it, it’s just kind of an aside, I had a few clients that I was conflicted out of being able to represent at the old firm, and so leaving that firm and those clients, because no matter whose client it was at the old farm, it could be a conflict. So leaving that environment got rid of those conflicts, and so now I work with those particular institutions. So being small has its benefits, but it’s a little more sporadic when you’re small.

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah. I’ve been there.

Phillip:
Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Daisey:
I mean, yeah. I run a different type of company, but very similar. I was on my own for a while now. I’ve gone the route of building and have a larger team and things like that, but pros and cons, it depends what you’re looking for.

Phillip:
Yeah. Sizes is stability, but it’s the opposite of agility.

Kevin Daisey:
There’s a sweet spot in there, right?

Phillip:
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey:
Well, okay, cool. Well so, speaking of going forward and what your plans are, I’m sure right now, you guys are head down in the work and taking care of your clients. What is really some of the plans, let’s say from the next year to the next up to five years? Have you thought about that far ahead? What you’re trying to accomplish?

Phillip:
Yeah. Well, we would like to grow just a little. We want to stay small, but maybe having an associate or two, or a tech advisor, technical advisor, they help with patents, or two, would be good. On the marketing side, we don’t really use our website for marketing obviously, because, I don’t know if any of my clients have ever even looked at it. They just come from other clients and other friends and stuff, but I’d like that to be better, just so if someone stumbled on it, it would represent us well. And if they want to call us, great. If they don’t, at least they thought, “Hey, that’s a good website.” So it’d be good if it was a bit better.

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah.

Phillip:
More to click on, more interesting. Right now it’s just, “Hey, here’s the guys. Call us if you want to.”

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah. I mean, the way I look at that, it’s like when you’re really word of mouth based and you’re not going to… Advertising and all that stuff for a firm like you would not be as effective as say like a personal injury firm, where it’s like, “Immediate attention needed now.” Whoever shows up possibly has to work. So it’s a little bit different approach, so yeah. For you, it’s a brand and a website that reflects you. That shows who you are, the benefits of working with you, and that just increases, hopefully, it would increase the amount of those referrals that actually convert to clients. If that’s enough by itself, could be worth investing in.

Phillip:
Well, the other-

Kevin Daisey:
Well beyond that is-

Phillip:
There is another-

Kevin Daisey:
Beyond that, they find you without you having a referral.

Phillip:
Right. Well, that’s what I was going to say is that we’ve started… Being a small firm, we’ve really started to cater to smaller clients. Small companies, so not the Microsofts of the world, but probably companies that you’ve heard of, but more for niche products. But we’d love to connect more with small inventors. And I looked into some of that sort of marketing, so with popular mechanics and things like that. But for a small firm, some of that’s cost prohibitive, in terms of the yield you would expect to get.

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah, no. I mean, weird one, software development, and even web development. We used to not be niched in law, so everyone listening. We haven’t always be been niched and working with law firms. We got there over time and decided that was the industry for us to stay with. But prior, when I was just a web developer, designer, locally, working with local companies or doing software development and application development, I was on the board of our local technology council. I still am, actually. I’m the marketing chair of our local tech council. And so I get tons of people that come to me about ideas, software, marketing website. Mostly people have ideas for all kinds of stuff. Tons of them. Tons of ideas, and most don’t have any money at all. And you can waste a lot of time talking with them and trying to help them.

Kevin Daisey:
And then there’s some programs that we… Locally, in groups, that they can go to to get help. And then every once in a while, there’s someone that has got some money in deep pockets, or some funding source. But there’s a lot of folks out there with ideas that aren’t able to actually take them to fruition because it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of money. It’s a lot of risk.

Kevin Daisey:
What’s the saying? Ideas are cheaper, something like that. But there’s a lot of people out there with a lot of cool ideas, it’s just, how many are going to take it to the next level and can afford to hire someone like yourself or someone like me? You got to wade through a lot of the noise, I guess.

Phillip:
I think the best candidates for that, for you really having the money to be able to dig in and do a good job, are folks… Sometimes somebody be working as a software engineer and they come up with a new hedge trimmer in their spare time or something. So it’s a little bit of a lark form. It might be a world changer, like the little girl who invented the bacon hanger, for the… The bacon microwave fixture. But generally, the best folks who really value their IP and want to get it done are folks for whom it’s their business, but it’s a small business. So, a concrete manufacturer or something, has a neat idea. It’s in their business, it makes them more competitive. It makes them more money and therefore they’re serious about getting it done.

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah. And protecting that, yeah.

Phillip:
Right. Right.

Kevin Daisey:
No. Actually, yeah. So, I think it’d be interesting to see what, and I’m sitting here telling you that if you were to go to that angle, it’d be some thought and strategy put into coming up with how would you market to those, and find those folks.

Phillip:
Right. Right.

Kevin Daisey:
It’s a little more challenging then, again if you’re a family law, and people are searching for a divorce attorney, I can tell you how to do that all day. We can do that no problem.

Phillip:
I see those billboards all around the neighborhood.

Kevin Daisey:
The billboards, we do digital only. But I guess the point is it’s a little bit harder to do, to target that. It’s really, what are they searching for? We’re big on Google and search because if you’re unknown, and they have no referral, they’re going to go search. And so whether or not they’re doing their own research, and you happen to be the website resource that gives them those answers, and has articles and information, that’s one way to get them. Or, what are they searching when they’re actually ready to hire a patent attorney? We look at the data and say, “All right, what searches are being performed? How many sources are happening in a monthly basis?” And then that’s your slice of the pie.

Phillip:
Okay.

Kevin Daisey:
And how do we get in front of them? Certain tactics you can use, and then you can- [crosstalk 00:24:10].

Phillip:
Feel it-

Kevin Daisey:
… for the backwards math to figure out, “Hey, is that return on investment, if I invested this much money per month?”

Phillip:
Okay. So you’re looking at Google’s data of search histories.

Kevin Daisey:
We can forecast-

Phillip:
[crosstalk 00:24:22].

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah, we can forecast next month based on Google’s 15 years of, or 20 years of data. They know exactly pretty much how many searches will happen next month. And then you go, “Okay, that’s this many searches. What do we need to go to get in front of those searches? How much would that cost? If we got this many clicks, they go to the website, what’s the conversion rate of the website, roughly? That’ll mean this many leads. How many convert to actual clients? Okay, that’s this many clients per month. How much do I make on average case, or I mean, client?” And then you can figure out if it’s return investment or not.

Phillip:
Great, well the level you want to get involved at, yeah.

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah. You just work it backwards, and that’s what I tell every potential client for us, is, “If that doesn’t make sense then, you shouldn’t do it.”

Phillip:
Yeah. Sounds pretty rational.

Kevin Daisey:
Well, it’s got to be. Everything we do is business rational, type thinking. We’re marketers, but before we do any marketing, we have to understand the firm, the business itself.

Phillip:
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey:
Where me and my partner, we run our firm. We’re about 20 people at this point. But we’re still very involved. We talk with our clients. We have business conversations. We wire our folks to have business conversations, because before you can start doing anything, just like you, you have to be able to understand what they’re trying to do and what matters to them. What brings them money. Where do they lose money. What types of clients they want, what industries, whatever it may be, and then go, “Okay, now we start to look at what we can do to get you more of that,” and then come up with a plan. And that’s how it all should be done. And there’s a lot of creative shops out there, they’re creative and smart, but they’re not business savvy, and they don’t have the right conversations and ask the right questions.

Phillip:
Yeah. It’s got to be data-driven if the numbers are going to add up right at the end of the month.

Kevin Daisey:
Well data, and your goals, driven. So if I say, “All right, I’m going to do all this.” And you’re like, “Kevin, I don’t want those types of clients.” And, “Oh, I never asked.” I can drive you a ton of traffic of people don’t want to talk to, you know what I mean? So, that’s not going to help. Say for divorce, I just use that example, I have clients that do pro bono, and they like to do work with clients that can’t afford attorneys, which is not usual, but that’s what they want to do.

Kevin Daisey:
And then I have some who are like, “Hey, if they don’t have an income of 200,000 a year, we don’t want to talk to them.” So there’s very specific, and there’s a big gap in the middle there, right?

Phillip:
Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Daisey:
Most are in the middle. They want anyone that’s looking to do a divorce, we want to talk to them. So if you want to ask the right questions, and I assume your job, you’re probably asking a lot of questions and having a lot of conversations.

Phillip:
Yah. Yes.

Kevin Daisey:
And sometimes, that’s how it should be done. And that’s what we try to do here.

Phillip:
That sounds good, hey. Might give you a call.

Kevin Daisey:
We can talk afterwards. So yeah, I appreciate you coming on today and sharing your story. I think it’s really cool and unique. I love talking about that kind of stuff, again, I’m part of the technology council and we have a couple of attorneys that are part of that group too, that are really good friends of mine, in your space.

Kevin Daisey:
It’s just all intriguing to me. I like cool things. I like taking things apart. I like building stuff. And I just think it’s cool how you got into it, your brother, your dad. Just really cool stuff. But everyone, if you’re tuning in again, check out McKinney Phillips, to see more about Phillip here. And maybe you’re another attorney that can help refer him business, or maybe he’d be a referral source for you. So I urge anyone on here, guests or the audience, to reach out each other and connect.

Phillip:
Oh, thanks Kevin.

Kevin Daisey:
Is there another way people can connect with you if they wanted to, or is the website have all the information?

Phillip:
I always just have people, I give people my cell number and they call me when they need me, and if anybody has it, I know it’s somebody I gave it to. If there’s anyone out there who wants to reach me, do you have the number Kevin? Or I can give it.

Kevin Daisey:
I do have it because I called you before we got on here, but I don’t… Let me see if I can list it for you. One second. You can say it too, if you like, I guess.

Phillip:
Yeah, I can just tell folks it’s 847 738 1132. 847 738 1132. Probably a quarter of the people I talk to aren’t really clients, they just have IP questions, intellectual property questions, and that’s fine. I enjoy those conversations as well. If you’re confused and I can help you, I’d be glad to.

Kevin Daisey:
Yeah, I appreciate that, man. Yeah, so please reach out Phillip. Check out his website or reach out to him, through his cell phone. And for this episode, we’re going to have this up on our website soon, featuring Phillip here. It’s going to be at thisisarray.com/podcast. So look for that soon. It’ll also be up on the audio. If you’re listening right now, it’s already there. And then we’ll be pushing this out everywhere, just like we always do. So Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube.

Kevin Daisey:
So Philip will have to be… He’ll have to dodge paparazzi here before he-

Phillip:
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey:
If anyone needs our help, thisisarray.com, explain on how we work, but we’re serious about what we do. We help law firms grow and that’s through any means with digital marketing, whether it’s their website, all the way to very targeted advertising. So if you need that kind of help check us out, ask me any questions. Like Philip too, open for any questions. If it’s just questions and you’re going to make your own website by yourself, I’ll help you out. So, just give me a ring.

Phillip:
All right. Well, we might want to go beyond that and try and see if we can find a way to reach out to those small inventors.

Kevin Daisey:
I’d be interested to see how that would work out and what tactics we can come up with.

Phillip:
Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Daisey:
Well Phillip, if you want, stay on with me for just a second, we’ll say bye to the audience. And we can chat a few more minutes, but everyone, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for coming on to another episode of The Managing Partners Podcast. I think we’re over 140 managing partners and going strong. So we appreciate everyone that’s listening and tuning in. We appreciate you and stay tuned for more. Philip? Nice to meet you.

Phillip:
Thanks for having me Kevin.