The digital transformation affects every branch of our society and changes the way people meet, interact and do business with each other. During the COVID pandemic, especially in knowledge intensive fields, the way how people work had completely transformed. Experts left their office buildings and moved to the home office, and meeting rooms were exchanged with online meetings. Although the buildings and conference rooms opened again, the development towards digital and decentralized work cannot be stopped anymore. The stage and trajectory of this development in the practice of legal experts in IP law firms is now investigated in a European survey via expert interviews.

Currently, we see that the IP system is affected by the accelerating digital transformation. The interaction patterns between lawyers/attorneys and clients are changing, as well as the professional exchange between IP experts is shifting. Also, the search behavior for specialized information has changed fundamentally in recent years. People are using search engines like Google to identify relevant professional contacts and information and trust their results. Also, the initiation of personal contacts has changed and is done often via social media. LinkedIn, a network designed for professional relationships, is growing at 15% a year with over 830 million members and is by far the most important network for legal counsels and IP professionals. But, being an active member is resource consuming and not all IP experts made the step into social media, yet. What are the trends and the future of the work for IP experts?

The first results will be presented at the IP dagen conference of Innovasjon Norge on 9th November 2022.