Many IP experts have spent years building a strong professional reputation. Their peers recognise the quality of their work. They may be invited to speak at conferences, contribute to specialist publications, hold positions in professional associations or receive consistently positive rankings. This recognition matters. In a profession built on precision, responsibility and trust, the respect of knowledgeable peers is an important form of validation.

Yet it does not automatically make an expert the first person a client thinks of when facing a concrete business challenge. This distinction can feel uncomfortable. If an expert is known to be highly capable, why should they need to communicate their value more explicitly? Should professional recognition not speak for itself?

The difficulty is that respect and choice answer different questions.

Professional respect is often based on an expert’s technical depth, legal competence, experience and contribution to the field. Client choice begins with another question: “Who can help us understand and navigate this particular situation?”

Several firms and experts may enter a client’s consideration with similarly strong reputations. When a decision has to be made, however, the client still needs a reason to connect one of them to the problem in front of them. They must recognise whose perspective is especially relevant, who understands the wider context and who can provide the confidence needed to move forward. Being respected establishes credibility. Being chosen requires recognisable relevance. A strong professional reputation may place an expert among those a client considers. Clear positioning influences whether that expert is remembered, recommended and ultimately selected for a particular mandate.

Why professional reputation does not always translate into client choice

Inside the profession, expertise can often be assessed through specialist knowledge and professional achievement. Clients usually have less information and a different frame of reference. They may not be able to distinguish between two technically excellent patent attorneys based on credentials alone. Nor do they necessarily interpret awards, rankings or long lists of practice areas in the same way as peers do.

What clients can recognise more easily is whether an expert understands the decision they are facing.

A technology company considering entry into a new market may not initially be looking for “an experienced patent attorney with extensive expertise across multiple jurisdictions.” Its leadership may be asking whether the company has sufficient freedom to operate, which risks could affect the investment and where its current IP position leaves it vulnerable.

A growing business preparing for a funding round may not think first in terms of portfolio management. It may be concerned about whether investors will view its intellectual property as a credible source of future value. In both cases, technical and legal expertise remain essential. But they become easier to choose when the expert has made clear how that expertise helps clients interpret a consequential situation. Without this connection, professional reputation can remain surprisingly abstract. The expert is known to be good, but the client does not immediately know when to call them.

Making expertise easier to choose

The first step is therefore not to communicate more frequently. It is to become clearer about the situations in which your expertise becomes particularly valuable. This requires a shift from describing what you know to articulating where your perspective changes the quality of a client’s decision.

Which business developments should prompt a client to involve you? What may be at stake at that moment? Which uncertainty can you help reduce? What do you see that a client, or a less specialised advisor, might otherwise overlook?

These questions can sharpen the way expertise is presented across profiles, pitches, articles, presentations and client conversations. They can also reveal whether the communication describes an accomplished professional or gives clients a compelling reason to involve that professional. The distinction is subtle, but commercially important.

Consider an expert whose profile emphasises decades of experience in patent litigation, complex cases and cross-border disputes. These are strong indicators of capability. Yet the message becomes more useful when clients can also understand the situations in which that experience is decisive: for example, when litigation risk could disrupt market entry, weaken a negotiating position or change the commercial value of a product launch. The expertise has not been simplified. Its relevance has been placed within a context the client can recognise.

The risk of communicating mainly for professional approval

Experts understandably want their communication to meet the standards of their peers. This protects professional credibility and helps ensure that complex issues are treated responsibly. The problem arises when peer approval becomes the dominant measure of good communication.

An article may demonstrate impressive knowledge while leaving a client unsure about its implications. A conference presentation may cover a legal development comprehensively without clarifying which business decisions it should influence. A firm profile may prove that the team is experienced without showing why its particular perspective matters. Such communication can strengthen professional standing while doing little to support client choice.

The answer is not to abandon technical depth or speak to clients in overly simplified terms. It is to build a bridge between professional substance and commercial meaning. That bridge is where positioning becomes valuable: it helps the market understand the distinctive role an expert can play before the need for that expertise becomes urgent.

From recognition to strategic relevance

In a more automated and competitive IP market, general claims of competence will become increasingly difficult to distinguish. Clients can access information more quickly, compare providers more easily and obtain initial answers without immediately involving an advisor. What remains harder to evaluate is whose counsel they should trust when the answer is incomplete, the trade-offs are significant or the consequences extend beyond the immediate legal question.

This is why communication increasingly functions as trust infrastructure. Over time, it allows clients to observe how an expert frames problems, connects IP to business priorities and brings clarity to uncertainty. It creates familiarity with the expert’s way of thinking before a mandate begins.

When this is done consistently, communication does more than increase visibility. It helps professional respect travel beyond the circle of people already equipped to recognise it. It gives clients a clearer reason to remember, involve and recommend a particular expert.

The most mature positioning therefore does not ask experts to become performers or promoters. It makes their professional value more legible to the people who may need it. Peer respect remains a vital foundation. Strategic communication helps convert that foundation into relevance, trust and business opportunity.

Until then, a question to reflect on:

When a client faces the kind of business situation in which your expertise would be most valuable, what in your current communication would make them think of you first?

Giulia Donato
Brand & Communication Strategy Consultant | Executive Coach | Adjunct Professor
people & brand strategies
www.donatostrategies.com