Hillary advises clients on domestic and international trademark, copyright, domain name, and advertising law. She has almost two decades of experience at both prestigious law firms and cutting-edge technology companies, so that she has worked to register and enforce some of the biggest brands in the world but has also assisted countless businesses with their first US trademark filing. Hillary founded Name Game IP in 2024 to continue providing clients of all sizes with clear and practical legal advice for smart business decisions.
Hillary Schroeder
Founder | Name Game IP
Hillary Schroeder is the founder of Name Game IP, a Bay Area IP boutique firm servicing a diverse array of businesses in industries including consumer goods, emerging technology, and biotechnology. When launching her own firm, Hillary knew that finding the right paralegal help would be crucial to her infrastructure and her former colleague, Amy Weber of WeberMark LLC, was the perfect fit. When she learned that Amy would be moving to Alt Legal to launch and head up Alt Legal Assist, a new, flat-fee, premium IP paralegal service backed by Alt Legal’s powerful IP docketing software and a team of top-notch IP paralegals, she was excited to continue working with Amy. Hillary has found her collaboration with Alt Legal Assist to be exceptionally beneficial for her and her growing practice.
Outsourcing IP Docketing and Paralegal Services Makes Business and Organizational Sense
Hillary recently went out on her own to launch Name Game IP after working at some of the largest law firms and in-house organizations including Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, Apple, and Juul Labs. In setting up the infrastructure at Name Game IP, one of Hillary’s first priorities was coordinating docketing services. Having worked in environments where docketing specialists handled key responsibilities, she recognized that while she could navigate a docket, the more intricate work required dedicated expertise.
“The idea of docketing is terrifying as a solo because I don’t know how to do it! I don’t think a lot of attorneys want to admit that – it’s very hard and detail- and time-intensive. It’s not in my skillset. I know how to go into the docket and I rely on it, but I do not have the skills to make the docket ‘work.’”
Moreover, Hillary recognized that as a solo attorney, doing the docketing work herself didn’t make business sense. “It’s not what my clients want to pay me for. My price point doesn’t reflect docketing work. I knew I wouldn’t be effective as someone who is a dedicated docketing specialist.”
Hillary decided to engage with a trusted colleague, Amy Weber, of WeberMark LLC for paralegal and docketing services. Within a few months, Amy joined Alt Legal as VP of Alt Legal Assist, Alt Legal’s premium IP paralegal service. Hillary was pleased to continue working with Amy at Alt Legal Assist, confident in the quality of support she would receive.
“Before engaging Amy, I had a prior working relationship with her at Juul and I know she’s the gold standard for super-experienced detail-oriented work. Amy is so amazing and works at such a high level as a legal professional.”
Alt Legal Assist is a Perfect Solution for Hillary’s Growing Practice
Since partnering with Alt Legal Assist, Hillary has been thrilled with the impact on her practice. While she was already comfortable working with Amy, she has also been highly impressed with the quality of work from the entire Alt Legal Assist team. “Everything has looked great!”
Additionally, she’s been able to strike the right balance for her workflow, ensuring that she’s able to keep legal fees under control for her clients. She appreciates having the Alt Legal Assist team handle docketing and prosecution tasks and also engages the team to handle higher-level work which is billed at an hourly rate.
“Alt Legal Assist’s flat fee docketing and prosecution services is the right price point for me and whether it’s being done by Amy or someone on the team, I have a lot of confidence that the work is being done well.”
Alt Legal Assist also provides Hillary the flexibility of taking on more complex work at an hourly rate. She has engaged the Alt Legal Assist team to participate in business strategy meetings and to handle arbitration complaints and has found their work to be of exceptional value and quality.
“Alt Legal Assist has helped me get the workflow right. The work I’m sending to Alt Legal Assist and how it’s distributed among the team is the most effective for me, my clients, and everyone working on the matters.”
Hillary also recognizes that working with Alt Legal Assist, as opposed to employing a paralegal or docketing specialist at her firm is resulting in cost-savings benefits. She’s able to grow her practice without having to add more staff since the docketing and paralegal work is handled at a flat fee.
“I am able to add on clients at scale without paying a full hourly rate for docketing and lower level work. Now I’m bringing in new clients at no additional costs.”
Overall, Hillary sees tremendous potential for Alt Legal Assist to continue helping her firm to grow and produce more revenue.
“I can’t imagine having Name Game IP without Alt Legal Assist. I don’t know how some of this stuff could have gotten done. I couldn’t spend 10 hours of my week docketing. We have so many amazing legal professionals and Amy and the Alt Legal Assist team is so good at what they do and they’re operating at such a high level.”
She also recognizes the potential for Alt Legal Assist to benefit other small and solo firms who couldn’t ordinarily find it in their budget to employ a full-time paralegal or docketing specialist.
“Alt Legal Assist allows solo practitioners who can’t afford docketing specialists to gain access to a team of expert paralegals. They can take comfort knowing that their docketing work will be handled well. Instead, they can concentrate on their billable hours.”
Additionally, because Hillary has spent about 50% of her career as in-house counsel, she immediately identified the benefits of Alt Legal Assist to in-house legal teams.
“I can see Alt Legal Assist as a great fit for in-house teams because they aren’t trying to generate revenue. They just want stationary costs and they have a budget for docketing. A lot of in-house counsel don’t have paralegals or docketing specialists, but Alt Legal Assist would fill that void. They would know that the work is getting done and they’d know the yearly cost and could build it into their budget.”
Transitioning Data to Alt Legal Was Shockingly Easy
Beyond the benefits of working with Alt Legal Assist, Hillary has been entirely pleased with transitioning her docket from another well-known IP docketing software company to Alt Legal IP Docketing Software. Having experienced difficult migrations before, she was initially concerned about the data migration process to Alt Legal.
“Everyone is terrified of file transfers. That’s how the docketing software gets people stuck and unwilling to move to a different, better IP docketing system. They think, ‘Maybe my current software isn’t the best but it would have to rise to a particular level to get me to transfer because I think that migrating data is going to be a multi-week project.’”
Hillary describes a prior migration process with another IP docketing software company as extremely frustrating for Hillary and her team.
“I could not believe how poor the customer service was for the migration data transfer and technical help. They sent us migration instructions and were like ‘Good luck!’ We had no idea what was happening.”
Hillary was also upset by a major issue when it came to transferring data. Shortly after the transfer she realized that registration certificates were no longer attached to the records. The docketing software company had failed to explain that documents attached to records were a completely different file download that Hillary was supposed to request. As a result, all attachments were lost in the migration. “It was like pulling teeth trying to transfer the data – nobody at the docketing software company really owned it.”
Immediately with Alt Legal, Hillary noticed a difference when it came to migrating.
“I was so surprised at how easy it was to transfer the data. I said, ‘What do you mean, that’s it?’ The Alt Legal team told me not to worry and that they would handle everything. I could rely on them. The whole process was so much gentler and simpler than other migrations I’ve participated in. There was no headache.”
Prior Docketing Systems Were Technologically Dated, Unintuitive, and Provided Poor Customer Support
Beyond the issues with faulty migrations that Hillary experienced with other IP docketing software, another issue that she identified with other platforms is that the functionality was really poor and outdated.
“My experience is that docketing software is about 15 years behind the times technologically. Docketing software that I used in the early 2000’s looked like it was designed in 1986. It was not user friendly, I did not know how to use it, and I was completely at the mercy of the paralegals if I had questions.”
Hillary noted that running reports was particularly challenging in other IP docketing systems. She felt that the report functionality was unintuitive and was very unhappy with the process.
“I found that I could look up something specific in these systems, but I didn’t really understand how to run reports. I’ve had years of heartache with reports having to do a lot of fussing to make them presentable for a client.”
For Hillary, this was extremely frustrating because it was essential that she be able to efficiently run client-ready reports in order to provide the service that her clients expected.
“You’re running the report because the client has requested it, but the reports generated look really bad and the technology feels far behind. Clients reasonably expect with modern technology that I just hit a button and the software generates a beautiful report. But every time we would run the report, it would look weird and require a lot of manual intervention to look presentable.”
Even more frustrating, Hillary felt that her prior IP docketing software company didn’t care to solve the problem, noting that complaints would go unanswered.
Alt Legal is a Better, More Sophisticated, User-Friendly IP Docketing Software Platform
Once Hillary got up-and-running with Alt Legal and began working with Amy and the Alt Legal Assist team to manage her docket, both she and Amy saw a significant improvement in the technological capabilities and ease-of-use of Alt Legal as compared to other systems they had worked with.
“I am excited about Alt Legal and because I’ve been using other systems for 10 years it looks different to me. I feel comfortable using Alt Legal and will take advantage of the free training to level-up my skills.”
Hillary was so pleased to see that Alt Legal provides exceptional reporting capabilities, making it easy for her to generate client-ready reports without paralegal support and no manual intervention.
“I can tell that I’m looking at reports generated by software from 2024, not 2004.”
Additionally, Hillary is very pleased with Alt Legal’s daily email updates. “I do highly rely on the daily emails. I tend to work in advance of deadlines but I like to use the reminders to make sure things are in order and it gives me assurance that we didn’t miss anything.”
Alt Legal Assist is Helping Name Game IP to Thrive with an Expert, Technologically-Driven Paralegal Team, Powered by Alt Legal IP Docketing Software
Hillary has been absolutely thrilled with her partnership with Alt Legal Assist and the move to Alt Legal IP Docketing Software. Not only has Alt Legal Assist helped Hillary to properly delegate work, allowing her to focus on the most important, client-focused tasks, but she’s been able to take on more clients and grow her business because of Alt Legal Assist’s simple, flat-fee pricing structure.
Additionally, the move from another IP docketing software platform to Alt Legal IP Docketing software has been a tremendous bonus. Hillary has been so pleased with Alt Legal’s modern, user-friendly interface and helpful features like easy, one-click custom reporting and Alt Legal’s daily email updates, which help Hillary check to make sure all of her work has been completed on time.
Hillary has also been thoroughly satisfied with Alt Legal’s exceptional customer support team which made the data migration process seamless and problem-free.
Overall, Hillary can see that Alt Legal Assist and Alt Legal IP Docketing Software will support her practice as she scales her business, without unduly raising her costs. “I would tell my friends that Alt Legal Assist and Alt Legal IP Docketing Software are great services!”
