Transforming IP Docketing from Cost Center to Revenue Generator: The Alt Legal Advantage
Alt Legal Team | September 05, 2025
One of the primary responsibilities for any law firm CEO or CFO is to thoroughly evaluate the return on investment (ROI) for every decision—especially technology investments. With so much new technology available, it can be difficult to assess whether the technology is going to be a good fit for your firm, whether it will deliver on its promises, and whether it will produce a positive ROI.
Traditional IP docketing software solely tracks IP matter deadlines and lacks significant automation, falling short for sophisticated firms with complex IP portfolios. This coupled with an outdated, unintuitive user interface, makes it difficult and time-consuming to use. Rather than adding value to the firm, these systems turn docketing into a cost center that drains firm resources and adds risk.
Alt Legal addresses this challenge head-on, empowering your team and helping you realize a positive return on your investment. From day one, our platform delivers measurable ROI by eliminating non-billable, tedious data entry, freeing up your team for higher-value, strategic work, and by generating new revenue opportunities through proactive, portfolio-wide global trademark monitoring.
With Alt Legal, you gain more than just docketing software—you gain a system that:
- Reduces non-billable overhead costs through powerful automation.
- Drives additional revenue and strengthens client relationships with a trademark monitoring add-on.
- Improves quality of life for your docketing and legal professionals.
Reduce Costs With Automated IP Docketing Software
Save Time and Money Through Automation
When you’re in the market to purchase new technology the term automation is front-and-center, but different vendors define automation differently, and the level of automation can vary significantly, ultimately affecting your ROI.
Alt Legal offers the most advanced automation available on the market, ensuring accuracy while eliminating manual, repetitive tasks.
A look at our global automated docketing features:
- Automatically adds your USPTO trademark filings and updates statuses and dockets and removes deadlines based on real-time USPTO updates
- Retrieves all trademark data, deadlines, and status updates directly from CIPO in Canada
- Extracts trademark data from over 180 IP offices globally via a third party data partner
- Automatically creates global renewal and use deadlines for trademarks upon registration and renewal
Thousands of global users appreciate how Alt Legal has made significant improvements to their workflows, greatly reducing the time and expenditures associated with IP docketing.
The cost-savings benefits are evident, particularly in the context of the complexities of USPTO trademark filings and the heavy amount of docketing work involved in these matters. Based on a billing rate of $400/hr for an associate attorney and $200/hour for a paralegal or administrator, Alt Legal’s advanced automation can expect to save you:
- 1.7 hours per new trademark filing ($680 in non-billable time)
- 1.3 hours saved ($520 in billable time) when generating reports
- 6 hours saved ($1,200 in non-billable time) per mark for docketing updates and client communication
These statistics represent real, recurring savings that directly reduce your firm’s overhead costs. These savings can also make a big impact when it comes to your fixed-fee-structured services.
Reduce Risk With Built-In Accuracy
A core element of Alt Legal’s advanced automation is the way in which it reduces non-billable work and manual data entry. Alt Legal pulls data from 3 trademark data sources, covering 180+ global jurisdictions and automatically identifies any updates to your matters and notifies you if there are any changes. This level of automation significantly reduces error as users never need to manually prompt the system to check for changes or click to update records.
The automation goes a step further in the US and Canada, connecting directly to the USPTO and CIPO databases, eliminating manual entry errors. Our docketing software will automatically add your USPTO trademark filings, update statuses, and most importantly, docket and remove deadlines based on USPTO updates. In Canada, our CIPO database connection retrieves all trademark data, deadlines, and status updates.
Increase Revenue: New Opportunities From Monitoring
Alt Legal Trademark Protection is a fully automated suite of global trademark monitoring and watch tools designed to generate additional revenue for your firm and seamlessly integrate with your Alt Legal IP docketing account. With Alt Legal Trademark Protection, you can:
- Identify new enforcement and filing opportunities at the earliest stages in the trademark prosecution process.
- Proactively reach out to clients, strengthening trust while demonstrating your value as a vigilant advisor.
- Offer subscription monitoring services, creating a consistent, passive revenue stream.
Because Alt Legal Trademark Protection costs only a fraction of traditional monitoring services, you can pass along savings to your clients while still turning monitoring into a profit center for your firm.
Our customers are already seeing these results—using Alt Legal Trademark Protection as both a client retention tool and a new revenue driver.
Quality of Life: Empowering Your Team and Clients
Ease of Use That Matches Modern Expectations
Achieving ROI isn’t just about seeing the dollars make sense – the intangible factors are also so important. One of the ways Alt Legal delivers a positive ROI is by providing user-friendly software that your employees will actually want to use. When the end users enjoy using their IP docketing software, it ensures that the software is being fully-utilized to its greatest potential, reducing risk and increasing profitability.
Purpose-Built Software
Alt Legal’s interface is modern, intuitive, and fast—removing frustration and keeping your team focused on meaningful work. Most docketing systems were built decades ago for patents and later adapted for trademarks but Alt Legal was purpose-built for trademark practitioners, so every field, feature, and integration is tailored to your trademark team’s needs. Our customers constantly report that they find the software intuitive and easy-to-use and they enjoy the modern interface and tools, filters, and settings designed to make the software feel like a well-designed app.
More law firms are adopting two separate systems to manage their complex portfolios, using Alt Legal to docket their trademark matters and selecting a patent-focused system to manage their patent matters. With the availability of specialized tools and the competitiveness of the legal industry, firms utilizing the best solutions to create efficiencies and cost savings will differentiate themselves with clients. And these benefits will only get better as each specialized, best-in-class platform continues to evolve and build functionality specific to the practice area it was originally built to support
Better Transparency and Collaboration with Stakeholders
Most legacy docketing software platforms charge for each user (or “seat” or “license”) leading users to share logins and passwords, or firms to withhold user access due to cost. This is not only an inefficient way to run a law practice, but also a security risk.
At Alt Legal, all of our subscriptions include unlimited users so you never have to pick and choose who has access to the docket. All users get their own usernames and passwords and personalized portfolios; their permissions can be set to read-only or edit access, and you can limit which matters each user has access to.
This flexibility enables you to not only streamline internal operations but also strengthen your client pitch as transparency and collaboration are now key differentiators in winning and retaining business. With Alt Legal you can provide:
- Unlimited Client Access: Provide complimentary read-only docket access, offering transparency that clients increasingly demand.
- Unlimited User Access: Share customized docket access with colleagues, stakeholders, foreign associates, and local counsel without additional fees or shared credentials.
Value-Added Services and Support
- Free, Unlimited Training: Available any time for individuals, groups, or new team members—ensuring your firm always maximizes the platform’s capabilities.
- Outstanding Customer Support: Fast, friendly, and highly responsive assistance via phone, email, or live chat.
- Ongoing Data Migration Services: We handle the heavy lifting when onboarding new clients or partners, keeping your docket accurate without burdening your team.
The Bottom Line
With Alt Legal, the return on your investment is immediate and measurable:
- Reduced overhead costs through unmatched automation
- Increased revenue via proactive monitoring services
- Improved quality of life for your professionals and clients
Alt Legal isn’t just a docketing system—it’s a growth engine for your firm. By turning IP docketing into a driver of efficiency, client satisfaction, and revenue, we help you transform what was once a cost center into a strategic advantage.