John's firm was managing a docket of nearly 500 trademarks, and it was time consuming to manage without a docketing platform. A variety of systems were evaluated and ultimately, Alt Legal stood out due to its automated data pull from the USPTO.
John Cook
Attorney
John’s firm was managing a docket of almost 500 trademarks, and it was time consuming to manage without a docketing platform.
“Our spreadsheet had 13 fields for every trademark, and even though I was copying and pasting the data, managing the spreadsheet was a huge time sink. I was spending 3-5 hours every few days. Managing our data by hand was tedious, and the process made me really nervous. I knew I was one typo away from making a potentially catastrophic mistake.”
John realized pretty quickly that between the time he was wasting and the anxiety their system was causing, he wanted to find something better.
“I spent about four hours researching all the available solutions. I was really surprised that so many of them required manual entry of all information. I don’t know why I would pay for a service that’s basically just like a fancy version of Microsoft Excel.”
But Alt Legal stood out to him.
“I liked that Alt Legal’s software is cloud-based. People at our firm use different operating systems, so we don’t have to worry about compatibility. Another thing in Alt Legal’s favor is just the general look and feel of the platform. But the feature that really made Alt Legal different was the automated data pull from the USPTO. I didn’t even want to consider software that didn’t automatically detect and update my filings and deadlines.”
When John signed up, Alt Legal automatically added all the firm’s US trademarks to his docket, so he was able to see all his filings and deadlines within minutes.
“The software made migration incredibly easy not only by automatically migrating the data for the emails that were associated with the firm’s USPTO records, but also by providing great reporting tools. Checking the new online docket against our paper copies was a lot easier with Alt Legal’s Excel export options. I double-checked every filing and deadline by hand and breathed a lot easier knowing everything was now automated. Being one keystroke away from missing a major deadline is just a stress I don’t need in my life.”
Within the first week, John noticed a huge block of time on his schedule.
“The software shaved a full workday off my workload. It freed me up to communicate with clients. Probably about two weeks after we signed up with Alt Legal, I had so much time back that I was able to sign my first client at the law firm.”
Being an Alt Legal customer has transformed John’s practice.
“Getting an email every day has become the bread and butter of my practice. The emails say to us, ‘Don’t forget this!’ The software does the equivalent of a part-time employee, so it’s like having another employee for way less than it costs to pay a human. The amount of money we save by not having someone input this data is huge.”
Though John thinks Alt Legal’s software is incredibly intuitive, he does occasionally need support. When he does, he loves the responsiveness of the support team.
“The Alt Legal staff has been great. I sometimes have these really obscure or very stupid questions. For example, one day I went through and cleared a lot of deadlines that I shouldn’t have. I contacted customer support and said, ‘I think I ruined everything; can you help me?’ They walked me through the system and showed me exactly how to restore the cleared deadlines. The support has been fantastic!”
