I’m delighted to be joined today by Jonathan Pratt, a Partner at Boult specialising in engineering and designs, and Angela McCleave HR Director. Jonathan Pratt has an active part in overseeing the educational needs of our patent assistants and attorneys.
MP: I guess I must still have a school/academic calendar ticking in my head, as it’s at this time of year, it always seems to me to be the time to reflect on the previous year and look forward to the next new term/season/year ahead. Also for many sporting people August is the pre-season training time, getting ready for the start of sporting leagues in September, so it’s the time to meet new team-mates and to find your position in new seasons team. Also, it’s time to start thinking of putting away those summer clothes and getting out your winter uniforms! And, in the UK at least, it’s time for those long summer days start to fade giving way to cooler Autumnal days. So, let’s start by reflecting on some of Boult’s successes in the last year.
Training
JP: We have lots to celebrate at Boult over the previous year. As you know Boult takes pride in being exceptional at training our aspiring attorneys. We put in a lot of effort training our new recruits. This year we can celebrate the fact that all of our candidates sitting their EQEs passed their exams this year. All of our attorneys sitting the Queen Mary course achieved a merit or distinction. On the TM side, we had candidates passing courses at Queen Mary, and Nottingham, as well as the Litigation Certificate and we’ve had exam success in the European Patent Administration Certificate.
Looking forward to the next year, we have a lot of changes coming in the patent attorney qualification process. The new-style EQE exams are in full swing, in conjunction with the old-style exams for one year only. It’s going to be an important challenge on how we prepare two sets of candidates for these two different sets of exams.
Of course, exam success is only the start and I think the most important thing is that we continue our training beyond that as we want to train people to be great attorneys which goes beyond just passing these exams.
MP: Good point Jonathan, and great news about all the exam success. Obtaining professional qualifications in the IP field can be difficult, so it’s all credit to Boult’s training and the excellence of our candidates that they all did so well. I also believe that as a firm we recently successfully completed an IT certification.
IT
JP: That’s right. We have recently successfully completed our 3-year ISO 27001 renewal. In 2019, we acquired Cyber Essential PLUS & IASME certification and more recently ISO 27001. The journey through Cyber Essentials, Cyber Essentials Plus through to the ISO 27001 took around four years, and we have just completed its 3-year renewal. ISO 27001 encompasses developments to our physical IT security, our policies and processes, and the implementation of new controls to create as secure a working environment for our staff and clients as is possible. We’re one of the few intellectual property firms in the UK to hold ISO 27001 certification, which is something we’re all really proud of and believe provides the best possible protection of our clients’ data asset.
MP: Our IT Director, Daniel O’Connor, has certainly successfully driven a cultural shift across the firm in the way we approach security. Well done to Dan and his team.
Working Environment
AM: Boult is also proud to have been featured in the Sunday Times Best Places to Work for 2025. You can read the full Sunday Times guide here.
We were particularly pleased to have received “Excellent” ratings for the major workplace engagement metrics covered by the survey, for reward and recognition, information sharing, empowerment, wellbeing, instilling pride and job satisfaction. Our rating for “wellbeing risk” was also far lower than our industry average, reflecting the excellent work of our HR team and wellbeing committee this year.. We are always looking at ways to make Boult a better place to work
Rebranded website
MP: Although our external website was launched just over a year ago, I still think it’s good to reflect on positive changes. A lot of things have changed since the launch of the previous brand – Brexit, the opening of new offices in Germany and Spain, the London office move, the pandemic, our post-pandemic hybrid/flexible working style, our approach to responsible business and so on.
We wanted our new brand to reflect us now– a firm that has successfully transitioned from the UK to become a European firm with a global practice and which reflects our values.
Our values are:
Fundraising
AM: We have a dedicated charity committee and have also raised over £5800 for Alzheimer’s Society and over £800 for other charities in the last year. Our chosen charity for 2025/26 is the British Heart Foundation and we recently held a fundraising activity at our Summer Party where we raised a further £2000 for this charity.
Awards
MP: We are extremely proud to have been nominated for and to have won a number of awards over the last year, including the following:
MP: Thank you all for taking the time to reflect on some of our successes. Behind each and everyone of these achievements is a team of hard working, dedicated individuals. Working together, we can achieve great things. Now it’s time to start setting our goals for next year. Time to start writing next year’s goals/wish lists.
JP: Patent attorneys’ don’t forget to add to your list: Continuing Competence. As IPREG advises 1. Reflect; 2. Plan; and 3; Record and Evaluate. We’re a few years into the new regulations now and it’s important to continue to look ahead to identify opportunities to sharpen our skills – it’s all part of being a great attorney which I mentioned earlier.
AM: We are always looking at how to make Boult a better place to work and take on board suggestions made by our staff which, where possible, we try to implement.
MP: I love writing lists (preferably colour coded lists), but even better than writing lists is ticking off tasks achieved! I’m off to find my highlighter pens…Can’t wait for the start of new school/academic year.
If you wish to find out more about Jonathan Pratt or Angela McCleave please visit our website and you can contact Jonathan at jpratt@boult.com. Find out more about working at Boult here. Details of the awards mentioned above, and more can be found here. Thanks for reading our conversation with Jonathan and Angela reflecting on some of Boult’s successes in the last year. Read the full series here.
