Woody Jameson
Duane Morris partner L. Norwood (Woody) Jameson has been honored as a Distinguished Leader by Daily Report’s Georgia Legal Awards.
The Distinguished Leader awards recognize lawyers for achieving impressive results in 2019 and demonstrating leadership while doing so.
From the publication:
Woody Jameson chairs’ Duane Morris’ global intellectual property practice, which has more than 100 attorneys and grew its head count 10% last year. He also represented well-known companies in complex patent litigation involving a host of technologies: fiber-optics; cybersecurity and semiconductors, to name a few.
He has led a joined defense group for Cisco Systems against claims it infringed several U.S. patents. They successfully narrowed the case down to one patent and obtained summary judgment on a licensing defense just before trial.
The global intellectual property practice that you chair at your firm grew 10% by head count in 2019. How busy does your current team have to get before you decide to bring in reinforcements?
We monitor work capacity of our team on a monthly basis and look at trend lines over multimonth periods. At the same time, we are also looking at projected work demand as a result of the litigation matters we are handling, or the demand of our clients in other areas of IP, such as demand for patent filings or work on inter partes review (IPR).
We are going into the market for hiring at the associate level when we are confident that we can have the associate hit the ground running from a work perspective. As to lateral partner hiring, we are most always looking for synergies with what our group is already doing, or looking for candidates who can take advantage of our platform to grow their practice. With any lateral partner hire, it is imperative that the prospective lateral candidate shares the firm’s vision and culture of collaboration whereby staffing of matters is based on bringing the best possible subject matter expertise to any client’s matter.
From your perspective in intellectual property, what habits do successful advocates share?
(1) Preparation, preparation and more preparation. There simply are no shortcuts to being better prepared than your adversary. (2) The art of the successful deposition. While depositions are viewed by many as developing the facts of the case, the best depositions result in sound bites on critical issues that will be used at trial, either as the basis for a line of questioning and/or impeachment. This absolutely requires a crisp question and obtaining a clear answer. (3) The ability to simplify and tell a story. Patent cases are always complicated. But, a complicated, technically correct argument that should be a case winner is of no value if a lay juror cannot understand it. That typically means lengthy calls with the technical team where merits issues are distilled and then distilled some more until an elevator speech is created. At that point, you have something to take to trial.
Who are one or two people who helped you achieve your career success, and how did they do that?
My dad. My dad did not practice law, and in fact, I am the first lawyer in my extended family from either my mom or dad’s side of our family. Not being a lawyer did not prevent my dad from having a substantial impact on whatever success I have had in my career as he passed on to me two genes (for better/some may say for worse) that have impacted my entire career: (1) work ethic; and (2) competitive spirit. Simply put, I hate to lose and, even if I do lose, it will not be because I was not prepared.
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