BUILDING A NEW BUSINESS MODEL FOR CLIENTS AND LAW FIRMS AKRAN | CASE STUDY

ABOUT AKRAN

AKRAN is an Italian specialist IP law firm

supporting clients with their intellectual

property rights in various jurisdictions around

the world. A recent spin-off from a large

Italian IP law firm, AKRAN currently employs

18 fee-earning lawyers and is growing rapidly.

Around 30% of its practice is in Italy, another

30% elsewhere in Europe and the remainder is

spread evenly across the rest of the world.

PARTNERSHIP GOALS

• Establish a new business model to create a

low-overhead IP law firm, with prosecution

and litigation capabilities

• Fulfill demand from AKRAN clients to meet

the pressures of managing IP

• Address restrictive European

labour laws

• Incorporate flexibility and scalability to

seamlessly accommodate business growth

SERVICES USED

• Trademark Paralegal Support

• Transactional support

• FoundationIP® - IP Management Software

KEY BENEFITS

• Delivers a competitive edge that helps

secure new business

• Keeps overheads low and protects margins

• Highly skilled personnel available on

demand

• Complete transparency over how IP is

managed

Newly launched IP specialist law firm AKRAN has built a lean and agile structure from the ground up. Leveraging CPA Global as the firm’s business partner, AKRAN is delivering a quality service to its international clients and helping corporate IP teams to meet the pressures of managing IP.

PROJECT SUMMARY

AKRAN | CASE STUDY2

THE CHALLENGE

AKRAN founder Alessandro Masetti was

dissatisfied with the traditional law firm

business model he felt no longer worked

for firms or their clients. A low-overhead

alternative would enable him to cut

IP management costs for his corporate clients

while protecting his own margins. However,

European and domestic labour laws made

it difficult to quickly recruit during peak

business periods and also proved too inflexible

should there be a downturn in demand.

Alessandro’s vision was to create a lean and

agile law firm that could deliver high quality

professional work to international clients

without incurring unnecessary costs. He

decided that AKRAN should be built with a

structure that comprehensively supported its

18 fee-earning lawyers, yet operated with a

skeleton in-house staff. The firm consequently

appointed CPA Global to implement the best

systems and processes to achieve this, as well

as provide all the transactional and paralegal

support required to make the new business

model work.

THE SOLUTION

Enabling cost efficient attorney and client

partnerships

AKRAN recognised the need to work with an

experienced service provider that understood

its requirements and had an established global

presence. It therefore appointed CPA Global

as its service partner, tasking the company

with all aspects of its trademark paralegal and

transactional support team.

AKRAN implemented CPA Global’s hosted

IP management solution, FoundationIP,

enabling the newly established firm to get up

and running immediately. With no hardware

to install and maintain, FoundationIP allowed

for instant collaboration between AKRAN and

CPA Global’s international delivery centres for

fulfilment of paralegal support requirements.

AKRAN has an experienced trademark

paralegal as the firm’s European point of

contact in CPA Global’s Munich office.

This paralegal then works with the company’s

global delivery centre to obtain the specialist

knowledge and expertise for any territory

where this is required. All work is quality

checked within the Munich office before

being returned to the client via FoundationIP,

ensuring complete transparency and

consistency of work across all jurisdictions.

As AKRAN was a brand new law firm, it

was also very difficult to predict future

workload. CPA Global therefore used its

six-step onboarding methodology to build

the client support strategy that would meet

AKRAN’s business objectives and enable the

firm to grow. The firm utilised CPA Global’s

IP ‘pay as you go’ model, which provides a

list of services and associated costs. AKRAN

could simply pick and choose from the list of

services with no long-term commitment or

deadline to use them.

AKRAN’s model clearly resonated with

corporate IP departments who were looking

for a more productive partnership with their

external counsel in order to decrease

IP management costs. Several clients followed

AKRAN in its new venture, leading to a

AKRAN | CASE STUDY 3

dramatic and sustained increase in the levels

of transactional and trademark paralegal

support it required. As a result, within the first

three months, AKRAN reached a point where

it could consider a full-time equivalent model,

with CPA Global providing the firm with

dedicated paralegal support staff.

THE KEY BENEFITS

A highly flexible, skilled and cost effective paralegal resource on demand

Eliminates IT operational and

development costs

As a centralised and cloud-based

IP management system, FoundationIP

provides guaranteed uptime and

transparency for AKRAN and its clients.

Protects margins and promotes cost savings

Employing CPA Global as its support

partner enables AKRAN to operate with

significantly lower overheads than a

traditionally structured law firm. It can deliver

high-quality work at a lower cost, without

impacting its profitability.

Offers built-inflexibility and agility

This lean and agile model enables AKRAN

to precisely match committed resources to

actual workload. Instant scalability enables

AKRAN to meet all short-term spikes in

workload without taking on additional staff

that may not be required and would impact

long-term profitability.

Access to specialist knowledge and expertise

As an international IP and legal services

outsourcing specialist, CPA Global offers

trademark support expertise in multiple

jurisdictions around the world, providing

AKRAN with detailed market knowledge

when advising clients in these jurisdictions.

ABOUT CPA GLOBAL

CPA Global is the world’s leading IP management and technology

company, trusted by many of the world’s respected corporations and

law firms. Our integrated offering is underpinned by an outstanding

global team of 2,000 people.

Now we offer customers The IP Platform: delivering integrated

Innovation and IP Portfolio software, services and insights across the

entire Idea Lifecycle, supporting customers every step of the way to

realise the value of their ideas.

For further information please contact us at

ipinfo@cpaglobal.com

CPA Global was and continues to be instrumental to our success and business growth. Together we can deliver a high quality multinational service to clients on much better terms.

ALESSANDRO MASETTIFOUNDING PARTNER