A Point of View Like No Other: Preston Heard

As a firm, we believe our team members unique perspectives allow us to deliver more integrated solutions, fresh perspectives, and quality advice. Each Saturday throughout the month, we're broadcasting interviews with some of our attorneys, featuring stories about their careers and told in their own words, illustrating just how our firm offers a point of view like no other.

Learn more about Preston.

Transcript

Welcome to Womble Perspectives, where we explore a wide range of topics, from the latest legal updates to industry trends to the business of law. Our team of lawyers, professionals and occasional outside guests will take you through the most pressing issues facing businesses today and provide practical and actionable advice to help you navigate the ever changing legal landscape. 

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Welcome back to Womble Perspectives and to the third episode in our 2024 February Saturday series. As a firm, we believe our team members unique perspectives allow us to deliver more integrated solutions, fresh perspectives, and quality advice. Each Saturday throughout the month, we're broadcasting interviews with some of our attorneys, featuring stories about their careers and told in their own words, illustrating just how our firm offers a point of view like no other. Today we're speaking with Preston Heard, who practiced out our Atlanta office and leader of the firm's patent prosecution and litigation. Thanks so much, Preston, for joining us today. 

We'll start with the first question we've been asking our guests on these episodes. Can you tell us a bit about when you knew you wanted to become a lawyer? What got you interested in the law and how did you get started in the field? 

Sure. So I did not have any idea that I wanted to be a lawyer until about third year of college. so I was an industrial and systems engineering major at Georgia Tech, and thought I was going the engineer route, but questioned whether that was really the direction I wanted to go. And I had a really good professor that was somewhat of a mentor and confidant in the industrial engineering department. He actually accompanied us on a study abroad to China, and so I got a lot of one on one time talking with him about the various career paths, and he said, have you looked into patent law? You could use your engineering background and then your love for debating ideas and the interest in the law, and use that as a way to do both, in a way. 

And so that was the first I had heard of it, thought about it. But that took me down the path of LSAT and going to law school, and the rest is history. 

And obviously, having that scientific and engineering background is a huge boon to practicing patent law. It seems like a good foundation for the rest of your career since it seems like you're still drawing on all that knowledge. 

Yeah, no, absolutely. Our family had no lawyers to speak of so it wasn't something that I ever had considered, mainly because it just wasn't what we did. And we didn't have any siblings or cousins or aunts and uncles that could tell me about what it was like to be a lawyer. Now my son has that in me and as a result, he has no interest in becoming one. 

You may have touched on it already since you mentioned that you like to debate ideas, but how did you get into the litigation side of IP practice versus patent prosecution, for example? 

So I had the good fortune of starting at an IP boutique law firm where you were encouraged to do all of it and you were handed a prosecution docket, just set of cases to work on as a patent prosecutor on your first day. And then otherwise, we're encouraged to explore and seek out other experience. And my first week on the job as a full time associate, I had summered there and then continued as a clerk at that firm, a partner stuck his head in and said, hey, would you have interest in working on a litigation? We've got one that's in the works. And I said, absolutely. That's what I really wanted to get exposure to do and I loved it. 

And it started to occupy virtually all my time to where I got rid of all the prosecution work and never looked back. And I've done exclusively that since probably a year in. 

What is it about the litigation side that's so appealing to you? 

I've always liked team sports. I like playing team sports, coaching team sports, watching them. I like the collective having a goal and achieving it together and knowing your roles and litigation always felt like that, that it was very team sport minded. You're never really siloed. You were part of kind of a bigger strategy, and I liked figuring out what my role was to be and help work on overall team strategy. So it appealed to me from the beginning and And continues. 

That makes a lot of sense. So you mentioned, this was in your undergrad days, you took an educational excursion to China and Singapore. What did you study there? It seems like that could be something that was a real benefit to you, either professionally, personally, or both. 

Yeah, absolutely. So Georgia Tech offered a number of good study abroad programs, one of which, through our industrial engineering department, was to study half the summer at National University of Singapore and half the summer at Qinghua University in Beijing. And we took a group of maybe 20 Georgia Tech industrial engineering students, and then it was, I guess, a unique program because we attracted and had attendees from, I think, UCLA, UFC, Berkeley and a couple of other engineering schools around the country that joined on. I think our total group was around 30 and we went and just were resident on those campuses. 

And half of our classes were taught by Georgia tech professors that came with us, and half by local professors from those universities. So it was a nice mix. We did some engineering classes. We did some asian history course. We visited the large focus of it was as an industrial engineer, learn manufacturing processes. And so we visited the jeep plant in Tianjin and saw the manufacturing floor and how the flow worked. We went to tiger beer in Singapore which is not well known here in the US, but it's big there in Southeast Asia and saw their brewing facility and their manufacturing line, bottling operations and heard from their management about how they maintained efficiencies and ran their business. So it was really educational. 

I think the best things that came out of it were the people got to study with and learn with. And then the professor that I mentioned that became a close mentor because he was doing the abroad thing. Like we were seeing the same sites and exploring the city. We did that with him. So all in all, it's great program and offered just a lot of opportunity to learn both on the engineering side and the culture side. 

Transitioning from your time abroad, you've recently taken on a leadership role in the patent prosecution and litigation team at the firm. What's that been like to not only focus on your own practice, but focus on the team and trying to get this group moving in certain directions and achieving certain goals. 

Yeah, you said it in the question. It's been both challenging and rewarding. I really enjoy being able to help steer the direction of an important group within the firm. The patent prosecution litigation group is large up there with business litigation and corporate as one of the larger groups. And it's really enjoyable and rewarding to help oversee that and administrate and to try to steer us in the right direction. But that all is because we have such great people in the group. So really fortunate to have that and to contribute to the firm's strategic objectives and the strategic plan where the focus is on IP. So that's really exciting. 

It's challenging because we have a number of different practices within the group different geographies, different client base, different just processes within each group and within each team that make it very difficult to implement any sort of one size fits all approach. So it takes a lot of time and effort to make sure everyone has what they need and don't feel overly restrained by red tape. As an industrial engineer, that was one of our overarching goals was to remove bottlenecks, remove inefficiencies, remove what keeps people from doing their job. And so it's almost a element of that background to be able to try to reduce the red tape on people. 

And from what you mentioned earlier, it sounds like it really sort of fits in well with just kind of your personality of being a team player and someone who likes to be part of a team working toward a common goal. 

Yeah, no, I'd agree with that. It truly is, and it's like a litigation team. We have a lot of different personalities and roles that people play within the group. And so I've learned a lot. I haven't done prosecution since the beginning of when I started practicing. And so it's, I've had to relearn a lot of things on how that works and how it's changed over the years but it's really been enjoyable. 

Well, this is very much an open ended question. Whatever you want to say about it will be great, but what's been your favorite part of practicing law? And has that evolved over the course of your career as you've gone from a junior associate to now a partner in a prominent leadership position? 

I think my favorite part, hands down, is trial, being in court. So even outside of trial, any opportunity to be in court with a judge, with a jury is my favorite part. it's the culmination of all that teamwork. So it's like the Super bowl. You get to the end, you make it through all of the hurdles with your team, and you get to execute the plan that's been two years in the making. I don't think there's really anything better and that really hasn't evolved. 

I think from the first time I got to tag along with a trial team early in career and not really have much of an active, substantive role, it still is exciting. You're still part of the, in some way part of the team. I was riding the bench at that point, and it's still fun to be a part of it, so it really hasn't changed in any way. 

And kind of extending that metaphor out, the bench players are the ones who help the starters get ready and practice for the games, and then they get better and then they move into the starting lineup like you've done metaphorically here as a litigator. Speaking of sports, it seems like a natural segue. You also coach basketball in your time outside the firm. Tell us a little about that. 

I just love coaching basketball. right now, coaching my two daughters, one in middle school league and one in fifth grade league. And I previously coached my son the boys particularly my son, a little harder to coach him. no, I love it because it's so fun to watch each season. I think I've done it seven or eight years and either with my son, daughters throughout the various levels. And it's always fun to get a new team every time have someone who's never played before. 

We've got some that have been doing travel leagues and doing it every year since kindergarten and so you have such a range of personalities and skill sets and it's so fun to see them at the beginning of the year and then you only have a couple of months, but by the end them cheering each other on and learning, using each of them to the best of their ability and seeing them improve. So I will be sad when it's over or maybe I'll just keep coaching other people's kids. 

Well, we very much appreciate you taking time out of your day to speak with us. 

Thank you for listening to Womble Perspectives. If you want to learn more about the topics discussed in this episode, please visit The Show Notes, where you can find links to related resources mentioned today. The Show Notes also have more information about our attorneys who provided today's insights, including ways to reach out to them. Don't forget to subscribe via your podcast player of choice so that you never miss an episode. Thank you again for listening.