Stephen Annicchiarico is a senior associate at WRP Legal & Advisory based down in Adelaide and recently won the intellectual property category at the Lawyers Weekly 30 Under 30 Awards — something he said was a bit of a surprise when speaking recently on The Boutique Lawyer Show.

“It was not something I expected working at a boutique law firm in little, old Adelaide. Sometimes you think you’re not near it, especially given the calibre of other people that are in the category from large firms and eastern seaboard firms where intellectual property is quite a big deal.

“But it felt amazing. It was certainly a good surprise. Of course, in the law, it’s very easy to forget what it feels like to get a big win. Of course, you get some good wins for clients every so often, but to get industry recognition is absolutely amazing,” Mr Annicchiarico said.

Being based in Adelaide, Mr Annicchiarico started with WRP just after the firm was established.

“All the partners left large firms and set up their own shop probably around eight and a half years ago now. I commenced as a clerk there. At the time, there wasn’t a very large IP, or if anything, any IP practice and there was no real specialist. And as I started, I always made it very clear to the directors that IP was an area that I was very interested in. I saw a bit of an opportunity for it to be an area that I grew with in the practice area.

“I grew the practice area myself, and the directors were always very supportive of that. The firm’s gone from, I think, when I started around seven or eight employees to now up to nearly 40 employees in that space of time. So, we’ve seen some exponential growth. From there, it was just a matter of me working on matters in collaboration with other partners,” he added.

“Then eventually, I studied my master’s in Sydney at UNSW in intellectual property law, and before you knew it, I was the go-to in intellectual property at the firm, and now I’m the practice leader, which all the partners rely on for intellectual property and technology matters.”

VIEW ALL

In terms of being able to build a new practice at a firm, Mr Annicchiarico said his own drive to start a business or build or develop something himself was a key factor in developing his own IP practice.

“Opportunities in a law firm when you’re a junior lawyer are few and far between to really develop an area. I think it played into the fact that it’s something that I always wanted to do generally, build something, develop something. Going through university, I developed websites and, as I said, ran a few start-ups. So, I’ve always had that thing in me to really build something and develop something,” he explained.

“Then it was a matter of having the support of the directors and basically putting it to them, saying, ‘This is an area that I want to develop’ and asking for their input on how they think that I can get there, and one of those things was getting my master’s to become a specialist in that area. Another thing was to focus on really broadcasting that this is an area that we practise in, particularly given that we had quite a few clients who were going to other firms for their intellectual property matters. It was a matter of not only communicating that to existing clients but also promoting to new prospective clients that this is something that we do.”

In order to be able to develop this area within the firm as a younger practitioner, Mr Annicchiarico said that it was important to be able to demonstrate a business case for the expansion of the IP practice.

“It’s very easy to show that if we got existing clients and you go on their website. For example, when you show the directors of the firm all these clients and they’ve all registered trademarks, for example, with other firms, it’s very easy to demonstrate the commercial value proposition from that perspective. So, I think that was really what struck more senior partners of the firm at the time was, well, there’s actually quite a lot of opportunity here to not only grow this area, but grow it quite easily if we leverage from not only our existing clients, but other prospective clients,” he said.

“Of course, it wasn’t an easy conversation to have; certainly a daunting exercise as a junior lawyer saying, ‘I want this.’ There is that inferiority complex that you always have when you think, ‘Oh, maybe I don’t know anything. Maybe I’ve got no idea,’ but I think you just have to do it. Worst-case scenario, they say no, and then if they say no, then it’s finding out why. Fortunately, where I was at and where I still am, they were very supportive, and they agreed with me, and they said, ‘Go for gold’.”

And once he got the green light, Mr Annicchiarico said that setting clear goals, building relationships and seeking advice from experienced practitioners at the firm was — and remains — key.

“There’s so much experience around you in a law firm. I think you forget sometimes when you change your lawyer and everything’s new, and you’re almost overwhelmed to sometimes take a step back and say, ‘Well, there’s a lot of people around here, have a lot of experience. Maybe I can just get their thoughts.’ What came out of that was setting clear, specific goals and checking against those, benchmarking against those goals every six months,” he said.

“So, things like, more specifically, building a platform online, doing blog posts or on LinkedIn, for example, creating some really good and interesting content, avoiding those cringy posts that almost try to sell legal services and trying to just acknowledge that law can get a bit bland at times and just try and make it interesting and fun.”

The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Stephen Annicchiarico, click below: