2026 AI Patent Symposium Agenda
Presented by NCPP and NAPP · All times Eastern
CLE Session 1 · Governance
The Rules of the Road for AI and Patent Practice
Patent professionals are already confronting questions about confidentiality, privilege, accuracy, disclosure, client communication, supervision, and professional responsibility. This session focuses on the governance decisions that affect AI-assisted patent preparation and prosecution.
Timothy Snowden, CPP, CLP+
Confirmed
AI Issues: Present Pressures and Future Possibilities
Dan Smith, President, NAPP+
Coby Henry, Executive Director, NCPP+
Diallo Crenshaw, AIPLA+
John White+
This panel will address regulation, confidentiality, accuracy, attribution, client communication, disclosure, supervision, professional responsibility, and the future direction of the profession.
0.5 CLE
Insurance
TBD
This topic currently plans to address client confidentiality and privilege, tool selection, anonymization, use limits, data retention, vendor access, inaccurate outputs, and practical safeguards for AI-assisted patent work.
0.5 CLE
The Human Judgment Requirement: Ethics in an AI-Assisted Practice
Kimberly Kelleher, USPTO Office of Enrollment and Discipline+
This topic currently plans to address competence, supervision, diligence, candor, confidentiality, client disclosure, vendor oversight, and independent professional judgment.
0.5 CLE
CLE Session 2 · Operations
From AI Experiment to Repeatable Advantage
The challenge is deciding which work should be automated, how people should use the tool, how outputs should be reviewed, and how AI can improve patent operations without creating rework or new risk.
Keynote on AI Operations
Ann McCrackin, AI-Enabled Attorney & Adjunct Professor, UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law
This keynote will examine how AI is changing patent preparation, prosecution, legal-service delivery, staffing, training, workflow design, and the economics of professional work.
0.5 CLE
AI Tools
Tammy Pennington+
This topic currently plans to address process mapping, task selection, review points, exception handling, documentation, and the difference between AI-assisted work and unsupervised output.
0.5 CLE
Deploying Workflows in Operations
Ian Schick, Ph.D., Esq.+
This topic currently plans to address international AI and intellectual-property developments and their practical relevance to patent preparation, prosecution, disclosure, and global strategy.
0.5 CLE
Making It Work in a Firm: From Pilot Program to Practice
Lestin Kenton, Sterne Kessler+
This topic currently plans to address stakeholder alignment, training, adoption, practice-group differences, client expectations, governance ownership, and scaling AI without compromising quality.
0.5 CLE
CLE Session 3 · AI in the Wild
The Real World of Patent Practice
AI adoption looks different in every patent practice. This session uses four panels to compare large law, small law, in-house, and technology-tool perspectives.
Large Law: Scaling AI Without Losing Control
Kean DeCarlo, Womble Bond Dickinson+
Jessica Schulze, Harrity & Harrity
Phil Harris, Holland & Hart
Large firms must implement AI across practices, offices, attorneys, staff, workflows, and clients. This panel will address adoption, training, workflow consistency, quality control, security, and client expectations.
0.5 CLE
Small Law: Doing More Without Adding More
Ted Wood, Wood IP Law+
Yau Chan, YHC IP, founding member, Synchrony IP+
Lisa Schreihart, BSEE, MSEE, MBA, J.D., CPP+
Small firms and solo practitioners need AI solutions that fit limited time, staffing, budgets, and infrastructure. This panel will address practical adoption, tool selection, confidentiality, supervision, quality control, client communication, and incremental implementation.
0.5 CLE
In-House: AI Under Business Pressure
Adam College, Lenovo+
Braxton Davis, Meta+
Richard Bragg, Banner Engineering+
Patrick Evans, Microsoft Corporation+
In-house teams must connect AI adoption to business priorities while managing data governance, internal policies, risk tolerance, security, outside counsel, and accountability.
0.5 CLE
Technology Tools: AI in Patent Practice: Tools That Do the Work
Technology-provider panelists — to be announced
This panel will examine how AI tools are used in patent drafting, prosecution, prior-art analysis, claim review, portfolio work, and client service. The discussion will emphasize actual patent-practice use cases, demonstrations or representative matters, failure modes, output verification, and practical criteria for choosing tools that fit a specific practice.
0.5 CLE
This Symposium is expected to qualify for 6 hours of MCLE credit. NACLE will try to accommodate requests for CLE credit in your state. Attorneys may be eligible to receive CLE credit through reciprocity or attorney self-submission in other states.
Sponsor Recognition
We deeply appreciate the sponsors of the 2026 AI Patent Symposium! Please visit their websites below to explore how they can help you in AI-amplified patent practice.
Return to the symposium overview.
Ann McCrackin, AI-Enabled Attorney & Adjunct Professor, UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law
Speaker profile details coming soon.
Ian Schick, Ph.D., Esq.
Ian Schick is a patent practitioner and physicist who has spent the last decade building the technology that drafts patent applications. He founded Specifio in 2017 — the legal field’s first automated content generator — and in 2023 co-founded Paximal, where he serves as CEO. He previously spent about ten years in patent preparation and prosecution, primarily at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. He is a Stanford CodeX Fellow, a member of AIPLA’s AI Task Force, and a top-ten most-read guest author at Law360, and holds a Ph.D. from the Colorado School of Mines and a J.D. from the University of San Diego.
Patrick Evans, Microsoft Corporation
Assistant General Counsel, Intellectual Property Group, Microsoft Corporation
Patrick Evans is Assistant General Patent Counsel at Microsoft, providing legal guidance and support to in-house clients with a focus on Artificial Intelligence. Patrick is patent portfolio manager for the Microsoft Research AI and Machine Learning division, and has experience in acquisitions, joint developments, licensing, IP conflicts and risk mitigation, as well as AI tools design and architecture. Patrick has a Juris Doctor from Seattle University, a Masters in Computer Science and Engineering from the Paul Allen School at University of Washington, and an undergraduate in Computer Science from the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University, Canada.