Training the Next Generation of Strategic IP Advisors: Why SLW Built SIMPROF
Training the Next Generation of Strategic IP Advisors: Why SLW Built SIMPROF
AI is changing the apprenticeship path in patent prosecution. SIMPROF is SLW’s deliberate response, a simulation environment that builds the strategic judgment skills AI cannot replace, embedded inside a training apparatus the firm has been investing in for years.
There is a quiet concern in patent prosecution right now. As AI takes on more of the routine drafting work, the antecedent checks, the dependency cleanups, the first-pass specification structure, what happens to the way the next generation of patent attorneys learns the craft?
The traditional path was apprenticeship. A new attorney would draft, get marked up, draft again, get marked up again, and over hundreds of cycles develop intuition for what works. That cycle is being compressed. The first-pass drafting work that used to be the new attorney’s classroom is increasingly being done by a tool. The reps are still happening, but they are happening to with the assistance of software tools
If that worry is real, the obvious risk is that we end up with a profession of attorneys who can edit AI output without ever having developed the underlying judgment. That is not a future SLW is willing to walk into.
So we built SIMPROF.
What SIMPROF is
SIMPROF is a simulation environment. Think of it as a flight simulator and ball machine for patent prosecution. New attorneys, summer clerks, and patent agents practice on realistic scenarios, office actions, examiner interviews, claim amendments, restriction requirements, §101 and §112 patterns, in a controlled environment where they can make decisions, see consequences, and develop judgment without anyone’s actual matter being affected.
The scenarios are designed around the kinds of decisions that build prosecution intuition: when to amend versus argue; how to read an examiner’s signals; what risks a particular claim construction creates downstream; when a client’s business strategy should pull a portfolio in a particular direction. These are not the decisions AI is good at. They are the decisions human attorneys make every day at the strategic-advisory level, and they require reps.
SIMPROF gives those reps deliberately, in a controlled setting, before they have to be made on a live matter.
Where SIMPROF fits at SLW
SIMPROF is not a standalone tool dropped into the firm. It augments a training apparatus that has been running for years and is led by people whose full-time job it is to develop attorneys.
“Mentoring at SLW is formalized for at least the first two years, with structured pairings, regular check-ins, and curriculum that we actually maintain. SIMPROF gives mentees a way to practice between training sessions on the kinds of judgment calls we want them building intuition around, without requiring a real client matter.” — Jeffrey P. Cobia, who co-leads firm-wide mentorship at SLW
SIMPROF also fits our Summer Program. Each summer clerk is paired with two mentors, one senior and one junior, and the clerks rotate through structured exposure to office actions, drafting, and prosecution strategy. SIMPROF gives clerks a controlled environment to work through scenarios that supplement the live work product they are involved in, and it gives mentors something concrete to discuss with them.
“The thing we want clerks and new attorneys leaving SLW with is judgment. Drafting fundamentals matter, and we will always teach them. But the differentiator is the judgment to know what to do with a difficult office action, when an interview is the right move, what claim language is going to hold up. SIMPROF is built around that.” — Aris Gregorian, who co-leads SLW’s Summer Program
Why this matters now
Two structural facts about the patent profession make this work especially urgent. The first is that AI is genuinely changing how prosecution work gets done, and the apprenticeship pattern that produced excellent patent attorneys for decades is no longer a given. The second is that the patent bar is aging and the pipeline of new entrants is narrowing, only about a thousand new practitioners registered in 2024, well below historical peaks.
That combination, AI compressing the traditional learning loop, fewer new entrants in the pipeline, means that the firms that produce strong strategic advisors over the next decade will be the ones that designed for it. SIMPROF is part of that design.
What this means for clients
It might seem strange to publish an article about an internal training tool in a client-facing forum. We are doing it deliberately. The training rigor of a firm shows up directly in the quality of its work product, and our clients are entitled to know how we develop the people who will be working on their matters. SIMPROF is not a marketing message. It is the answer to a question every client should be asking: how do you make sure the attorneys who handle our portfolio are building real judgment, even as AI takes on more of the routine work?
That is the question. SIMPROF is part of how we are answering it.
In the next article in this series, Maureen Kinsler will walk through what a SIMPROF scenario actually looks like, what a clerk encounters, what feedback they receive, and what judgment skills the scenarios are designed to develop.