In this episode, we welcome Roger Wylie, the Managing Partner of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton. Roger was the Co-Managing Partner of Townsend and Townsend and Crew prior to its merger with Kilpatrick Stockton.

Roger is a registered patent attorney with over 20 years of experience in a variety of technologies, including software, business methods, consumer goods, complex machinery, and medical devices. He focuses his practice on patent prosecution and counseling, advising start-up and established corporations, venture investors and other intellectual property stakeholders with regard to all aspects of patent prosecution and acquisition, counseling, licensing, and litigation. He also counsels clients on a wide range of trademark, copyright, trade secret and other IP-related issues.

Roger has obtained or assisted in the procurement and management of hundreds of U.S. and foreign patents, many of which have been successfully litigated and enforced. Much of his current work involves product clearances and freedom to operate analyses, Inter Partes disputes in the patent office, infringement and validity analyses for litigation settlement evaluation, and acquisition due diligence.

Growing up in southern Georgia in a family of teachers, Roger was exposed to a diverse group of friends and acquaintances. From an early age, he internalized the values of equity and inclusion emphasized by his grandfather and his mother. As a patent attorney, Roger saw that others, including his wife—who is also a patent attorney—faced career obstacles that he did not have to overcome because he was a White male. His upbringing and his ability to see other perspectives have made him a determined leader in leveling the playing field in the legal profession.

In this episode, Roger tells us about his career path from studying material science to becoming a leader in the IP world and the Managing Partner of Kilpatrick Townsend, and he explains his philosophy of management and leadership. He also explores the strides made to date by the legal profession in general and Kilpatrick Townsend in particular to make the profession more welcoming to underrepresented groups as well as the work that still needs to be done to achieve greater diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Highlights include:

• Learning about diversity at the dinner table in southern Georgia
• Being married to a patent attorney and seeing the patent bar from a woman’s perspective
• The importance of making people feel like they belong
• Fitting right in as a young lawyer while seeing women and visible minorities having a harder time
• An undercurrent of change rippling through the legal profession, partly due to client demands for greater diversity
• The value of having women role models in management
• Seeing diversity in broader terms than just gender and race
• How to open your horizons and gain new perspective through volunteering and pro bono work
• Managing a successful legal practice sometimes requires getting out of the team’s way
• Leading by asking questions
• Examining the entire pipeline, from grade school to law-firm partnership for opportunities to encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion
• The chicken-and-egg problem of representation
• Making paternity leave more acceptable as a means of helping retain legal talent
• The definition of success
• Creating seats at the leadership table for diverse voices
• The satisfaction of seeing colleagues build their careers at the firm and move up through the ranks