Imposter syndrome Part 1 - Why senior patent and trade mark attorneys feel like frauds

Intellectual property attorneys, whether patent attorneys or trade mark attorneys (or that increasingly rarer breed that are qualified as both), spend years studying and practicing to qualify and be registered as an attorney with the relevant authorities.

Their academic CV generally includes a top-class honours degree, often topped off with a masters or PhD (in a highly technical scientific discipline for the patent attorneys), several years of gruelling, low-pass-rate professional patent and trade mark qualification exams, post-qualification litigation and UPC training; and that’s before counting the continuing professional development that is required for the rest of the career.  I think it’s safe to say that IP attorneys are generally well-educated and pretty bright, by any objective standard.

In their day-to-day practice they handle complex technical, legal and commercial IP cases and strategy, sometimes for dozens or hundreds of different clients.  They advocate in patent office hearings and oral proceedings, train the next generation of IP attorneys, do marketing and business development, manage client and internal stakeholder relationships, and in many cases are involved in owning and running cross-jurisdictional legal firms. And they’ve been doing this for a decade or two (or three).

That’s elite level professional experience and skill.

Yet, a significant majority think, on a daily basis, that they aren’t good enough and they’re out of their depth. That they’ve been lucky and not earned it, or they’ll be found out.

Sound familiar?

It is the expert’s paradox, the persistent inability to internalise objective success and a chronic fear of being exposed as a fraud.  Most people know it as Imposter Syndrome, but this nomenclature is unhelpful by implying a clinical pathology or diagnosable disease, when it is instead a widespread internal experience of thoughts and feelings.  It is more correctly named Imposter Phenomenon/Experience or simply described as Imposterism.

For IP attorneys, imposterism is not an anomaly, it is the norm for a significant majority, and especially as fee-earners become more senior.

As a former patent attorney, I still rely heavily on data and evidence to understand the problem first before figuring out or applying solutions. So, let’s examine the evidence of why senior IP attorneys are especially vulnerable to imposterism, and why it is selectively targeting the highest performers in IP firms.

The structural pressures of IP firms

Anyone can experience imposterism, but some people are more susceptible to it, and in particular those who have tendencies towards perfectionism, putting others first and people pleasing, it is obvious to see how not being perfect, putting oneself first, and not pleasing others can lead to feelings of inadequacy and of not being deserving. 

Personality preferences and tendencies alone are, however, not enough for imposterism to exist and it is external factors that provide the conditions that cultivate it. Unfortunately, working in an IP firm can often provide those exact conditions.

The margin for error is very small in IP law, for example a single misplaced word in a patent claim can reduce the commercial coverage for a blockbuster product, or an accidentally missed deadline can open the door to competitors in key markets and destroy a client’s commercial advantage.  With such a small error window, IP attorneys are conditioned from their first days as a trainee to view mistakes as potential professional indemnity claims. While this intense scrutiny can produce exceptional case work, it also wires the brain for chronic professional anxiety.

Private practice IP firms typically assess and reward their attorneys at all levels based on individual KPIs and metrics: hours booked, hours billed, income, aged WIP, write-offs, new filings etc.  And generally, how someone is doing against their KPIs is widely available within the firm, whether intentionally by distribution or through other routes such as interrogating the billing and docketing systems.  Numerical KPIs as the sole (or even primary) way of measuring and rewarding performance, and the concerns around that being seen by others adds to the conditions cultivating imposterism.  Falling short on one or more KPIs, even if exceeding others, adds to thoughts and feelings of not being good enough.

Furthermore, as IP attorneys become more senior they face a significant career transition. The skills that made them an outstanding practitioner and got them through the qualifying exams are entirely different from the skills required further up the career ladder. Suddenly, they are expected to be practicing without supervision, leading on advocacy in oral hearings, and training and managing junior attorneys to qualification and autonomous practice, and in private practice even more skills are needed at the senior level, bringing in new work and client wins, and running a business with employees dependent on their decisions and actions. Often these new skills are expected without training or ongoing support. It’s hard to go from feeling like an expert to not knowing what to do in large parts of your day without feeling like an imposter.

Cognitive science provides an explanation

Why these thoughts and feelings disproportionately affect the most competent high performers also has a basis in cognitive science through the well-known cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, but operating in reverse.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is when incompetent individuals lack the knowledge and self-awareness to recognise their limitations, resulting in unearned overconfidence. Conversely, experts and high performers are acutely aware of the size and complexity of their chosen field.

For IP attorneys that experience imposterism, they understand the nuances of patent and trade mark law and practice, and are aware of the holes in their knowledge and skills, and so they undervalue their foundation of expertise simply because they are embedded in it, they’re too close to it, and mistake their awareness of what they don't know for a lack of competence.

So why does imposterism matter for IP firms?

Most senior IP attorneys view their experience of imposterism as a personal thing and only they experience it, and it’s therefore something not to be spoken about out loud. They treat it as an internal motivator, assuming that fear of failure is driving their high standards.

But they’re wrong.

Imposterism is not just an internal motivator for one person. It is a real and significant commercial drain costing IP firms unrealised fees, stalled growth, and lost client opportunities. In addition to the financial leak is a hidden, destructive organisational pattern, what psychologists identify as a behavioural cascade, that directly threatens your firm's culture and succession pipeline.

In part 2 of this series, we’ll shift from understanding the background and the problem to quantifying the damage and what can be done about it. We will reveal exactly how this hidden psychological overhead impacts your firm's write-offs, how your leadership style might be accidentally holding more junior attorneys back.

Following that, in part 3, we’ll cover some evidence-based approaches that senior IP attorneys and IP firms can use to transform imposterism and find a positive commercial advantage.

In the meantime, if you are struggling with the feelings discussed in this article, and want to start to take control of your own destiny, drop me a message using the contact us section. I work with patent and trade mark attorneys to support them, through coaching, in overcoming imposter feelings and pursue an IP career that makes them feel happy and unafraid.