Context
Novation is an early stage legal technology company building an AI trademark analyst for law firms. Its product takes a mark described in ordinary language, searches United States trademark records and the wider internet, and returns a clearance read and a risk assessment in seconds, with monitoring across the life of a mark. The company describes a longer ambition beyond trademarks: intelligent operating systems for whole professional industries, with law as the first. Its intended buyers are United States intellectual property practices and in house teams that file and maintain steady trademark portfolios and are open to changing how that work gets done.
The engagement ran through the fall of 2025, while the company was preparing for a pitch competition and its first structured outreach to firms. Trademark work was drawing more attention around it: international filings had returned to growth after a decline, brand licensing continued to account for the largest share of trademark economics, and intellectual property management software was the fastest growing part of the intellectual property market as owners looked for ways to handle larger portfolios. Law firms were under client pressure for efficiency and were adopting technology for document review and other routine work, which made clearance a plausible place for an AI tool to land.
Challenge
Novation is building an AI powered trademark analyst for law firms, with the longer ambition of intelligent operating systems for professional industries, starting with law. Heading into a pitch competition and its first outreach to firms, the company needed a clearer view of the trademark and legal technology market, a way to model the cost of its technical stack as adoption grows, a qualified list of firms to approach, and a way to follow prospective clients through product testing. Two questions sat underneath all of it: what the platform would actually cost to run as more firms came on, and how a competition award, if it came, should be put to work. The calendar was the binding constraint, since the cost breakdown and a first set of qualified leads had to be ready before the pitch, with the remaining work running across the rest of the term.
How the team worked
The engagement ran in two blocks. A short opening sprint served the pitch competition: TASK started with market research on the trademark, intellectual property, and legal services sectors in the United States and worldwide, then used that context to build the cost breakdown for the technical stack and a set of allocation options for the award. A second block opened after the competition and ran to the end of the term, covering business development and the two tools the client would keep using.
The market research separated a narrow reading of the trademark market, covering legal services, filing fees, and management software, from a broader reading that also counts brand licensing, and carried that split through to the global picture. Every source was named and listed so Novation could check a figure or refresh it later. The cost work then went through the technical stack component by component, hosting, databases, AI model usage, trademark and business data providers, authentication, email, and payments, separating what sits inside free or low tiers at early usage from what moves with load.
On the business development side, the team combined manual research with AI assisted validation to assemble the lead list, screening each firm against the ideal client profile on trademark practice depth and on signals that it was open to new technology, and recording a fit judgment rather than a simple yes or no. The outreach, follow up, and feedback templates were then rewritten beside the originals so the change in voice was visible, and the sequence read consistently from first contact through post demo feedback.
Both tools were built for daily use rather than a single read. The forecasting model runs on Excel macros from one inputs sheet, prompting for growth interval, growth rate, projection length, and whether to include revenue, then generating a monthly forecast and a dashboard covering cost by month, cost by category, firm growth, and expenses against revenue. The tracking tool runs on Google Sheets and Apps Script, where a client's phase is updated by dragging a card and the Sankey diagram, KPI strip, and filters refresh together, with invalid moves blocked. Each shipped with written instructions, troubleshooting notes, and suggested future enhancements.
Workstreams
- Researched the trademark, intellectual property, and legal services markets in the United States and globally, covering size, structure, trends, and growth outlook.
- Mapped the cost of Novation's technical stack across hosting, databases, AI model usage, data providers, authentication, and payments, noting which components sit within free or low tiers at early stage usage.
- Built a macro driven cost forecasting model in Excel that turns cost assumptions, firm count, and growth settings into monthly projections and a dashboard.
- Compiled and validated a curated list of intellectual property law firms matching Novation's ideal client profile, combining manual research with AI assisted checks.
- Rewrote Novation's outreach, follow up, and feedback email templates in a more confident and formal voice.
- Designed a client lifecycle tracking tool with a drag and drop board, a Sankey pathway diagram, and a KPI and filter panel for monitoring prospects through alpha and beta testing.
What the team found
- The trademark market reads very differently depending on where its boundary is drawn: a narrow view covering legal services, filing fees, and management software is far smaller than one that also counts brand licensing.
- Licensing, rather than legal work, accounts for the largest share of trademark economics in both the United States and the global picture, while legal services and software sit well behind it.
- Intellectual property management software is the fastest growing component of the intellectual property market, moving ahead of both licensing and legal services.
- Intellectual property law is a small slice of overall legal services billings, which puts the near term opportunity closer to trademark practice depth than to the scale of the legal industry as a whole.
- The cost work showed the stack splitting in two: components that stay inside free or low tiers at early usage, and database and model usage costs that move with adoption and set the shape of the curve.
- Firms that matched the ideal client profile on trademark depth often missed it on size, so fit had to be judged on specialization and openness to new technology rather than on profile thresholds alone.
What the client received
- Written final deliverable with executive summary and appendices
- United States and global market research on the trademark, intellectual property, and legal services sectors
- Cost breakdown of the technical stack across hosting, databases, AI services, data providers, authentication, and payments
- Two allocation options for a competition award, each split across product, infrastructure, marketing, talent, compliance, and contingency
- Excel cost forecasting model with macro driven projections, a dashboard, and a user guide
- Curated and validated list of intellectual property law firms matched to the ideal client profile
- Revised outreach, follow up, and feedback email templates set against the originals
- Client lifecycle tracking tool with a drag and drop board, a Sankey pathway diagram, and a KPI and filter panel
- Written instructions, troubleshooting notes, and future enhancement lists for both tools
Outcome
Novation now has a documented picture of the market it is entering, a cost structure it can explain to investors and partners, and a forecasting tool it can update as its assumptions change. It has a qualified outreach list matched to its ideal client profile, messaging that reads consistently from first contact through post demo feedback, and a tracking system that shows where prospective clients sit in the testing lifecycle and where they leave it. It can also weigh two ways of putting a competition award to work and see what each would buy.
Recommendations
- Work the qualified list first, leading with the firms whose trademark practice depth and openness to new technology are strongest rather than with the largest names on it.
- Use the revised outreach, follow up, and feedback templates as one sequence, so first contact, a second touch, and post demo feedback carry the same voice.
- Run prospective firms through the tracking tool from the first alpha invitation, so pathway and drop off patterns accumulate as they happen rather than being reconstructed later.
- Refresh the forecasting model's inputs sheet before each new projection, and treat growth interval, growth rate, and projection length as the levers to test rather than editing a generated forecast.
- Choose between the two award allocation options on whether to add a guided registration workflow: one concentrates spending on sharpening search and acquisition, the other shifts weight into building the filing workflow.
- Keep the compliance and security groundwork in the plan under either option, since firms tend to raise it early when evaluating a new tool.
Next steps
- The client was handed the validated lead list with a recorded fit judgment for each firm, ready to be worked in order.
- The client was handed the outreach, follow up, and feedback templates in revised form set against the originals, so the change in voice can be seen and reapplied to new messages.
- The client was handed the tracking tool with instructions for daily use, troubleshooting notes, and a list of enhancements to consider once the team has run on it for a while.
- The client was handed the forecasting model with its inputs sheet, dashboard macro, and a set of reminders covering the order of operations and the edits that break it.
- The client was handed the market research appendices with every source named, so any figure can be checked or refreshed as the market moves.