Request for Continued Examination | Get Off The RCE Merry-Go-Round

“It’s annoying to hear – your arguments are not persuasive or they are considered moot in the view of new grounds of rejection”

Source: Patent Law Memes

Negotiating a Patent with the Examiner

Patent prosecution begins with filing a patent application before the USPTO. The examiner then sends an office action detailing the rejections based on prior art references, ineligible subject matter, etc.. In response to the rejections, you will be required to document your arguments and amend your claims as needed. These are tasks that require great attention to detail, and can be particularly daunting during the nascent stages of your career, when you are still learning to effectively analyze office actions and prepare winning responses. 

Once you have responded, it is of course possible that the examiner might not find your arguments persuasive, or might come up with new prior art references, and send you another rejection. Sometimes, this may lead to a rejection being denominated as a new ground of rejection, despite the core of the rejection not having been changed.  Despite all your efforts, after going back and forth on office actions, you land up with a final rejection. Then what do you do? You request for continued examination.

Request for Continued Examination (RCE)

Isn’t it ridiculously frustrating when the examiner says that either your arguments are not persuasive or they are moot in view of a new ground of rejection, particularly one that, at its core, was the same thing that you’d been fighting? After your final rejection, you might decide to file a Request for Continued Examination (RCE) under Title 37 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) § 1.114. You will need to again make arguments and amend your claims in the RCE, but even this might be futile. 

In my early years as a patent prosecutor, the most exasperating part of the process for me was what I call the ‘RCE merry-go-round’. As per the USPTO patents pendency data in May, 2021, the average total pendency time of an application without RCE is 22.8 months. The pendency of applications which include at least one RCE is more than twice that, at 46.2 months. With an RCE, you can feel like you are going around in circles most of the time, without moving ahead in the prosecution process. This was one of the most frustrating aspects of my early career as a patent prosecutor, and discovering how to avoid it has made my patent prosecution substantially more rewarding.

Alternatives to RCE

In order to understand how I got off the RCE merry go round, I think it makes sense to start by looking at the alternatives.  To my mind, there are two: (1) abandon the application, or (2) appealing the rejection.  When I started my career, these seemed like false alternatives.  Abandoning the application obviously means that (absent continuations or other related cases) there will be no patent, while appeals are both long and expensive.  Additionally, abandonment and appeals both have a certain finality to them, while RCEs are like a siren song whispering that an allowance might be right around the corner.  However, one of the defining characteristics of a merry-go-round is that you can go around forever.  Accordingly, to get off the RCE merry go round, it is necessary to accept the alternatives, and I have found that the most palatable way to do this is to plan for them from the beginning and set your goal as having no RCEs.

Laying the Groundwork for an Off Ramp

To understand how to avoid the RCE merry go round, let’s work backwards from the point where you have received a final rejection.  If you are going to abandon the case, it would mean that whatever protection may be available is not significant enough to be worth fighting for.  For example, the examiner may have found a prior art reference that is so close that any innovative features that aren’t described in that reference aren’t commercially relevant in any case.  If you are going to appeal, it would mean that you have made all of the arguments that are worth making but still reached an impasse with the examiner.  The question then, is how do you get to the point where there are no arguments worth making on any commercially significant feature after only the second office action? I have developed two guidelines which have served me well, and which I believe are generally applicable to prosecuting cases while avoiding RCEs.

#1. Include All Your Points of Novelty in Your Claims

By including all of the features you may want to use to distinguish the prior art at the outset, you can avoid a scenario in which you end up having to file an RCE to add a limitation distinguishing a newly cited reference.  The result of this is that my claim sets generally look like trees, with broad independent claims and then multiple, relatively deeply nested sets of dependent claims.  For example, if there are multiple innovative ways of implementing a commercially significant feature, I will generally have a branch of dependent claims for each.  This way, if the potential to protect one branch is pruned off by the prior art, I can still point to another branch as innovative without having to make an amendment that could trigger a final rejection.  Similarly, if the claims recite all of the commercially meaningful novel features from the outset, then if I reach an impasse I can be confident that any additional tweaks will, at best, result in a patent directed to something that isn’t commercially significant.  In that situation it is easy to recommend an appeal, and to avoid getting on the RCE merry go round in the first place.

#2. Be Very Concrete

There’s a phrase in patent drafting called “picture claim.” This term is often used as a pejorative, but in actuality, it can be quite helpful to have a picture claim or two included in your claim set.  As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words but the real concept is not to have a lot of words but to have words that are very concrete. It means that your claims are going to very concretely focus on something that is

a.  Of value to your client (e.g., the preferred embodiment of their commercial product);

b.  Unlikely to be covered in a generic reference written by someone who didn’t actually implement your technology.  

Having this type of picture claim is useful because it can avoid getting trapped in multiple rejection-response cycles (and therefore RCEs) due to disputes over wording.  This is particularly critical because the broadest reasonable interpretation rule means that examiners are almost certain to prevail if there is a dispute on how a claim can be interpreted.  However, if you have a concrete claim at the end of your dependency tree, then you will be much less likely to be in a position where there’s a misinterpretation, and so you can be confident that any impasse is likely to reflect a substantive disagreement with the examiner which can’t be resolved by any amount of RCE-enabled tweaking.  Once again, you can straightaway head to the appeal route without getting on the merry-go-round.

Takeaway

That’s how I avoid getting on the RCE merry-go-round. I know, it absolutely increased my quality of life as a patent attorney. I used to feel that there must be something wrong with me that I could not seem to get my case allowed. I would make changes an examiner seemed to be comfortable with in an interview, just to have him or her issue another rejection and avoid addressing the changes I just made by saying they are moot in view of a new ground of rejection I felt didn’t change anything.  This was annoying and felt awful.  However, by using a logical approach that plans for appeals from the outset, if you reach an impasse you can be confident you did your best and not feel any temptation to continue to futz around. You can even reduce the number of appeals by avoiding certain obvious mistakes while responding to office actions.

You can also check out our tool, Arguminer, which analyzes your office action and matches it with responses most likely to put you on track for success. It’ll help you reduce the frustration of patent prosecution by providing proven arguments, which experienced attorneys have used to overcome their toughest rejections. I have been able to get past this unpleasant chapter of being trapped on the RCE merry-go-round during my career and I hope with the above guidelines, you are able to get off it too.

IP Toolworks Demo

Disclaimer – “The statements and views expressed in this posting are my own and do not reflect those of my law firm, are intended for general informational purposes only, and do not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion.”

Anti Alice Responses to Overcome 101 Rejections in Automated Vehicle Systems Domain

AU 3668 – Computerized Vehicle Controls and Navigation, Radio Wave, Optical and Acoustic Wave Communication, Robotics, and Nuclear Systems

Every patent practitioner has faced the same obstacle — a client’s application is assigned to an unfamiliar art unit. This presents two challenges:

  • Unfamiliarity with the examiners: When you have many applications in the same few art units, you get a feel for what works or does not work for the examiners in those art units. Getting assigned to a different unit means you have no direct insight into the examiners’ tendencies and preferences.
  • Unfamiliarity with the application of the law: Some units have particular ways of interpreting USPTO guidance and case law that plays out in differences in how they go about examining claims and determining patentability. The kinds of arguments likely to be successful in molecular biology, for example, may be less effective in prosecuting another technology, such as casino gaming or automated vehicle systems.

Using a tool such as Arguminer can simplify the research needed to find arguments that work in a particular art unit with a specific examiner. It can also identify what did not work. Armed with this intelligence, any patent practitioner can take inspiration from proven  arguments in any art unit.

Here are three proven arguments that overcame §101 rejections in art unit 3668 to draw inspiration from:

Technical Details Can Show a Practical Application

Rejections under § 101 are difficult because they often cross over into territory covered by §§ 102 and 103. Under the Alice framework, well-understood, routine, and conventional implementations can be held against the applicant in determining whether the claims recite an abstract idea.

This leads patent practitioners into a logical tautology — an invention comprises patentable subject matter if it is patentable. Specifically, an invention is less likely to encompass an abstract idea under § 101 if it is novel and non-obvious. This means that to overcome a rejection under § 101, you may need to point out the invention’s novel and non-obvious features.

One case in which this worked is U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 14/845,189. This case, argued capably by Gregory M. Murphy of Landmark Intellectual Property Law, PLLC, claims “systems and methods for optimizing energy usage in a household.”

The claims were rejected under § 101 as encompassing “an abstract idea of gathering, analyzing, and displaying data.” In response, the applicant argued that the invention provided a particular practical application that moved the invention outside the realm of an abstract idea under the first prong of the Alice framework.

Specifically, the applicant argued:

Here, the claims are similarly not “directed to an abstract idea.” Much as in Free Stream Media Corp., even though the claims include computer components operating in some manners in which they are designed, the technical focus of the claims is based upon systems including energy generation or storage components, disaggregation based thereon, and actionable user recommendations based on both TOU schedules, but also based on energy generated and/or stored locally. And as in SAIC, the claims do not stop at an abstract concept alone, but present a full solution based on, and grounded in, technology. Specifically, the claims require steps combined in an unconventional method — that is, taking into account local generation or energy storage, before making recommendations based on actual (not hypothetical) past use time periods.

What the applicant relied on in this case was the novelty of the method. By arguing that the method was novel, the applicant successfully persuaded the examiner, Shon G. Foley, that the invention had a practical application beyond a conventional implementation of an abstract idea.

In other words, the examiner originally took the position that the claims were directed to the abstract idea of optimizing energy usage. The applicant countered this position by pointing out the technical details that made the invention unconventional in the industry. As such, the examiner withdrew the rejection because the invention is more than the abstract idea of energy optimization. Instead, it is a concrete and practical application of a technical method.

A New Solution Can Establish a Specific Technological Improvement

A technological improvement is the opposite of an abstract idea. This concept is embodied in the second prong of the Alice framework. By arguing that the claimed invention improves technology, you can persuade an examiner that the invention is “significantly more” than an abstract idea.

A case where this argument succeeded is U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 15/531,319, now U.S. Patent No. 10,408,710. The claims of this patent are directed to a process for taking measurements from a tire and predicting its fault portions.

The examiner rejected the claims under § 101 on the grounds that the method only recited “an idea ‘of itself.'” The examiner explained the rejection by stating that the claims only recited collecting and analyzing information. This left the claimed process disembodied from a technological implementation and, as such, was no more than an “uninstantiated concept.”

In response, Tatsuya Sawada of Kenja IP Law, PC made two clever moves. First, the claims were amended to tighten up the language and tie the method steps to physical objects like processors, temperature measurement units, and displays.

Second, Mr. Sawada focused the arguments in the office action response on the specific technological improvement provided by the invention. That is, rather than broadly stating the field of the invention, the arguments focused on the specific problem the invention addressed.

The method according to claims 20-23 provide an improvement in the conventional a tire fault portion prediction. The claimed method allows for significant enhancement of accuracy in a tire fault portion prediction by calculating fatigue characteristic values corresponding to degrees of fatigues of the tire constituent members based on the temperatures measured with the temperature measurement unit, and predicting fault portions of a tire based on at least one of the fatigue characteristic values and the tire running parameter.

In view of the above, claims 20-23 are directed to significantly more than an abstract idea, because claims 20-23 show that there is a significant improvement in the technical field of the tire fault portion prediction…

This argument overcame the examiner Thomas P. Ingram‘s rejection because the claims were no longer “uninstantiated” or disembodied. Rather, they were tied to a concrete technological improvement.

A Physical Process is the Opposite of an Abstract Idea

In a somewhat related argument, a claim that recites a physical process is much more likely to overcome a rejection under § 101. For example, it is much more difficult for an examiner to reject a claim as reciting “mental steps” when the claims include physical processes.

This argument was used in U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 16/023,699. This application is directed to a process for mitigating soil compaction in agriculture.

The claims were originally rejected under § 101 as encompassing steps that could be performed in the mind of a person. This is often a difficult rejection to overcome because almost any steps could be performed in the human mind with enough support. But Douglas J. Duff, intellectual property counsel at Deere & Company, made some insightful moves.

Mr. Duff amended the claims to include a work tool with a seeding device. This allowed the applicant to argue that the claimed method could not be performed in the human mind because the human mind lacks the physical implements recited in the claims. As such, the claimed method was a physical process rather than a purely algorithmic process.

Contrary to the Office’s rejection, none of the elements the Office identified in claims 1 or 16 fall within any of the groupings of abstract ideas identified by the Office in its 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance. Instead, the identified claim elements recite a method of mitigating compaction that includes “passing a work tool through the work area at the plurality of reference points” and “adjusting the work tool at the plurality of reference points,” as recited in claim 1, and a method of mitigation compaction with a vehicle that includes “determining vehicle position data as the vehicle passes through the work area at the plurality of reference points” and “adjusting the work tool at the plurality of reference points based on the vehicle position data,” as recited in claim 16. Further, claims 1 and 16 provide the further step of adjusting seeding actuation of the seeding device based on the compaction data.

Accordingly, the steps of adjusting a work tool and adjusting seeding actuation are more than a process that “covers performance of the limitation in the mind but for the recitation of generic computer components,” as alleged by the Office, as the work tool adjustment and seeding actuation are significantly more than mere mental processes.

This argument succeeded. In the next office action, the examiner Mohamed A. Algehaim withdrew the § 101 rejection.

Looking for Inspiration in Your Art Unit?

In Art Unit 3668, you have a fair chance of overcoming a § 101 rejection by arguing the novel features of the invention, the technical improvement brought about by the invention, or tying the control method to a physical process. These arguments can be reasonably adapted to argue on other electronic and computer-controlled processes.

In other units, you can use Arguminer to identify arguments proven to be successful. In fact, you can also use Arguminer to find out what didn’t work to avoid any mistakes. To learn more about Arguminer, contact IP Toolworks.

IP Toolworks Demo

Originally published on IPWatchdog.

Disclaimer – “The statements and views expressed in this posting are my own and do not reflect those of my law firm, are intended for general informational purposes only, and do not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion.”

In re Stanford: Ruined by a Processor and a Memory

“The Federal Circuit’s focus on an aspect of the Stanford application which no one could (or did) argue was a protectable innovation not only damaged Stanford, it also squandered an opportunity to bring clarity to an area of law that desperately needs it.”

Computer boilerplate – such as including “a processor and a memory” in claims – is commonplace in patent applications. However, the recent case of In re Stanford shows that this can be a double-edged sword, having the potential to both undermine an application and to ruin an opinion that could otherwise have shed light on several of the thorniest open questions in patent eligibility jurisprudence. Skeptical that such a common practice could be so counterproductive? Read on.

Language with No Benefit

From the outset, the invention in Stanford is not one where computer components should have had any particular significance. The invention was not a new type of computer, or a new component, such as an innovative processor or memory. Instead, it was (at least according to Stanford) a significant advance in the field of genomics. Many types of analysis required for genome interpretation are dependent on haplotype phasing – i.e., determining whether a gene was inherited from a person’s father or mother. The Stanford invention used a particular type of model with particular states – a hidden Markov model with inheritance, compression fixed error, and MIE-rich fixed error states – to perform haplotype phasing. This significantly increased the resolution of haplotype phasing, moving from 80% in the prior art to 97.9% for phasing using the Stanford invention.

Despite the fact that the Stanford invention was not, and did not purport to be, an improved or a novel computer, both the claims and description of the Stanford application included computer components. The description explained that “the present invention relates to methods, techniques, and algorithms that are intended to be implemented in a digital computer system” (application 13/445,925, paragraph 56), before saying that “such a digital computer or embedded device is well-known in the art” (id.) and providing a description of a generic computer system that is repeated in a variety of other Stanford patents and applications (e.g., U.S. 8,966,413, U.S. 2013/0073329). The claims included similar generic computer language, with limitations requiring various steps of the innovative haplotype phasing method to be performed “on a computer system comprising a processor and a memory” or “using a computer system comprising a processor and a memory” being added to the claims in response to a rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

From Ineffective to Detrimental

Stanford does not appear to have benefitted from the generic computer language in their application and, to the extent that language had any impact at all, the impact appears to have been negative. The addition of computer language to the claims did not convince the examiner to withdraw the 101 rejections. Instead, the examiner stated that “[t]here is no limitation in the claims that the claimed computer program or computer uses other than a generic computer,” maintained the rejection and made the successive office action final. (Office Action of 7-9-2015 on application 13/445,925). On appeal, the computer language appears to have gone from having no effect to being actively detrimental. The patent trial and appeal board explicitly referenced the application’s generic computer system description when explaining that “the claimed method does not teach a technical improvement in a computer processor, but rather use the computer as a tool to improve data analysis.” (Ex parte Dewey, Appeal No. 2018-005489, on application 13/445,925 (PTAB 2019) at 11). Similarly, the Federal Circuit specifically noted the claims’ recitation of a “processor” and a “memory” in support of its statement that “it is hard to imagine a patent than that recites hardware limitations in more generic terms than the terms employed in claim 1.” (In re Stanford, Case No. 20-1012 (Fed. Cir. 2021) at 11). Unsurprisingly, the attention paid to aspects of its application which were admittedly not innovative did not bode well for Stanford, and its appeals were unsuccessful at both the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and the Federal Circuit.

A Missed Opportunity for Clarity 

The attention paid to the non-innovative aspects of Stanford’s technology also made the Federal Circuit’s opinion much less useful in terms of clarifying the proper application of section 101. Looking purely at the law, it would have been reasonable to expect the Federal Circuit to have found the Stanford claims eligible. In McRO, Inc. v. Bandai Namco Games America, Inc., the Federal Circuit had already dealt with the eligibility of a method which used an assertedly innovative computational tool to improve an inherently computerized process, and found that claims which recited the tool with sufficient specificity were not directed to an abstract idea. Additionally, McRO clearly undercut the reasoning used by the PTAB to find the Stanford claims ineligible – i.e., that they recited steps that could be performed in the mind or recited mathematical concepts – since the McRO claims had also recited mathematical concepts (i.e., determining morph weight sets based on phoneme subsequence timing) and improved a process that not only could be, but actually had been performed in the human mind (i.e., synchronizing character and lip models in computer animation). If the Federal Circuit was going to find Stanford’s claims ineligible, it had the opportunity to significantly clarify the rules of subject matter eligibility by clearly distinguishing McRO. It did not. Instead, its only mention of McRO was to note that the PTAB had distinguished that case because the McRO claims “improve ‘the computer animation process itself.’”  In re Stanford, at 6. It then stated that “we are not persuaded that claim 1 is not directed to an abstract mathematical calculation” and “we are not persuaded that the process is an improved technological process.” (id. at 10). No explanation whatsoever was provided for why an improved haplotype phasing process was not “an improved technological process” while an improved computer animation process was. Similarly, no explanation was provided for why Stanford was doomed for reciting mathematical calculations while McRO was not. Indeed, it appears that the most important factor for the Federal Circuit was that the claims recited “a processor and a memory” without purporting to improve them, since it saw fit to explicitly state that:

Notably, claim 1 neither requires nor results in, a specialized computer or a computer with a specialized memory or processor. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a patent claim that recites hardware limitations in more generic terms than the terms employed by claim 1.

Considerations Going Forward

The Federal Circuit’s focus on an aspect of the Stanford application which no one could (or did) argue was a protectable innovation not only damaged Stanford, it also squandered an opportunity to bring clarity to an area of law that desperately needs it. More ominously, it also raised the question of whether the nigh-ubiquitous practice of including form computer language may need to be rethought, since if the Federal Circuit puts so much weight on “a processor and a memory” in claims which recite those terms, maybe it would be better to omit them all together to avoid falling into the trap of having to assert an improvement to the processor and the memory, rather than being able to focus on the actual invention an application is intended to protect.

Originally published on IPWatchdog.

Disclaimer – “The statements and views expressed in this posting are my own and do not reflect those of my law firm, are intended for general informational purposes only, and do not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion.”

Three Steps To Achieve Effective Delegation | The Gamechangers

“If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.”  

– John C. Maxwell

Do you ever feel as if your to-do list is never-ending or you are always short of time? In a survey conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), it was revealed that 46% of companies have a high level of concern about their workers’ delegation skills. Delegation of work takes a great deal of unlearning, particularly if you are of the habit of doing everything yourself. You will need to let go of the adage, “If you want something done right, you must do it yourself.”

At some point in your career, you will undoubtedly have achieved enough experience in your practice to have younger attorneys working under your guidance. When the time comes, you will have to learn a whole new set of skills to pass on the torch in a way that is productive both for them and for you. Delegation of work might not be easy but when done well it has tremendous value both in maximizing the limited hours you have available in a day and in allowing younger attorneys you might be assigning tasks to to learn the tricks of the trade.

As challenging as delegation can be, these three steps will help you delegate effectively:

  1. Delegate everything you can
  2. Recognize the things that can’t be delegated
  3. Change your ‘cannots’ into ‘cans’

#1. Delegate Everything You Can

Try to delegate every task which can be delegated to your team. If you don’t delegate, you’ll always be overburdened, putting you at risk of missed deadlines and slippages in work.

Once you start delegating, you’ll soon realize that it:

  • Reduces your mental load
  • Saves time
  • Improves client relations

For example, you don’t need to deal with invoice disputes yourself. If your client thinks that your billing hours are too high, let one of your (less senior) team members tackle the situation.

The delegation will have the added benefit of freeing up your mind and time to better handle the more important tasks on your plate, resulting in a job well done.

#2. Recognize the Things That Can’t be Delegated

You need to know what you can and cannot delegate. If you are anything like me, you won’t let anything get out of the door on your project, unless you are completely comfortable with it. If you delegate work to a team member who cannot handle the particular task, you’ll end up doing it yourself, which is an inefficient use of everybody’s time. Often, the task will end up getting done twice, as it is easier to redo something from scratch than to fix somebody else’s shoddy job.

To avoid this situation, you need to recognize which tasks can be delegated to your team and which you have to handle yourself. While there will always be some level of rework when delegating tasks, especially when you are training someone, it is important to consider the strengths of your team members when making assignments. You don’t want to delegate a task that your team member might still be too inexperienced to handle. Thus, the key is to delegate all you can, but to also recognize what you cannot delegate.

IP Toolworks Demo

#3. Change Your ‘Cannots’ Into ‘Cans’ 

The final step to effective delegation involves a special alchemy: transforming your ‘cannots’ into ‘cans’. To achieve this, a few things are essential:

Recognize the Strengths of Your Team Members

Knowing the strengths and abilities of your team members is key. For example, one colleague might be good at drafting patent applications, while another might be good at analyzing office actions in order to draft a meticulous response. Acknowledging these strengths will make your job reviewing their work easier and faster. Everyone wants their team to do a spectacular job—because, let’s be honest, at the end of the day, you are still accountable for the work done by your team. Therefore, learning what to delegate to whom is an art, which you need to master as a leader.

Train Your Team Members to Overcome Weaknesses

You also need to recognize the areas where your your team members might be less capable. Once these areas are identified, training can be provided to turn weaknesses into strengths. It is essential to build support for people working on the tasks you assign. For example, you might provide a library of template communications, to give your team members examples of how to respond to a particular kind of communication from the USPTO. This will make it much easier for a newer attorney to put together the expected response.

Provide The Right Kind Of Support At The Right Time

Make sure that while delegating, you provide your team members with the support they need when they need it. For example, if you have tasked a colleague with analyzing an office action and drafting a response, you must explain what to look for and how issues can be tackled. You might want to point out key areas to focus on and refer them to your library of office action responses for additional guidance.

As a matter of habit, during the last fifteen years of my career, I put together a document containing examples of successful office action responses, to help with future responses. It was, in effect, a small library of office action responses that I could use in my own practice and share with colleagues I might be assigning work to. Eventually, I thought, why not build a library of office action responses that encompasses the work of other attorneys as well? This is when I put together the Arguminer software. It allows you to upload your office action and will analyze various parameters within it to match it with relevant responses other attorneys filed. It looks something like this:

You can customize the results by selecting different parameters, such as successful responses to office actions by the same examiner. You might want to show your team member the arguments used in similar office responses, which will have higher chances of succeeding.

Getting a younger attorney to get the same results as you would, is good delegation, which is exactly what this software helps to achieve.

Takeaway:

The more you delegate, the more trust you place in your team members. It boosts their confidence, helps in improving the overall team effort, and gives you time to focus on more important tasks.

Practicing good delegation also gives you a breather to concentrate on the things that are important to you. This is a special category of “non-delegable duties” that for me includes making time each night to spend with my one-year-old daughter before bed. There are some things I don’t assign out, even on my busiest days.

 I believe that the more you can outsource, automate and delegate out, the more time you have for your family and loved ones.

Good luck! I hope you can put Arguminer to use, to effectively delegate and train the young attorneys working with you. 

Disclaimer – “The statements and views expressed in this posting are my own and do not reflect those of my law firm, are intended for general informational purposes only, and do not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion.”