The Call’s purpose
The purpose of this Call is to gain perspectives on what works well in the current education and training of trade mark and patent attorneys, and what could be improved to meet changing needs and to enable more diverse professions.
The Call’s focus and scope
The Call is structured around four overlapping themes:
- Changing practice needs within the patent and trade mark attorney professions.
- The professions’ learning and development cultures.
- Appropriate ways to integrate professional learning and development, work-based experience, and assessment.
- How entry to the professions can be widened while ensuring that high professional standards are upheld.
We particularly want to understand how ‘day-one’ capability requirements in each profession are changing. This is important to do before we consider whether and how qualification routes into each profession may need to change. We explain more about what we mean by day-one capability requirements in our supporting information.
We want to gain stakeholder perspectives on changing needs in the context of:
- Changing consumer, employer and practice needs.
- Wider changes in how members of each profession contribute to legal services and multi-disciplinary teamworking.
- The potential that some capabilities are becoming less important within current practice.
- Capabilities that may best be developed after registration (e.g. in line with individual attorneys’ scope of practice and role, area of specialty, and practice environment).
We are particularly interested to explore how professionalism and professional ethics are embedded within qualification routes and to understand the impacts of generative AI and LawTech on the professions’ education and training, practice, and workforce needs.
We are also keen to:
- Explore best practices in professional education and assessment.
- Understand equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging issues in order to address current barriers to entry and progression.
- Explore specific issues to do with the size of each profession and how qualification routes into them can be sustained, informed by workforce supply and demand projections.
The Review does not focus on IPReg’s updated CPD requirements. It also does not cover broader post-registration education that falls outside IPReg’s regulatory responsibilities. However, we see both as relevant context to the Education Review. This includes in terms of how trainees are supported to engage with their future professional responsibilities and career progression opportunities.