Allen Baum, Partner, Barnes & Thornburg
In an interview with Invest:, Allen Baum, partner at Barnes & Thornburg, discussed how artificial intelligence is changing legal services, why intellectual property remains central to business growth, and the factors that continue to drive Raleigh-Durham’s innovation economy. “The Raleigh-Durham area has always been seen as a safe place to invest,” Baum said.
What changes over the past year have had the greatest impact on your clients and the innovation economy?
It depends on where clients sit relative to the macro events that are going on. Generally, our area has seen tremendous growth over the last 30 years that I’ve been here. It has been an exciting, vibrant place to be.
Over the last year, we have continued to see significant investments being made in the area. There have been challenges, but also a lot of opportunities. Clients that are looking for those opportunities and taking advantage of them are finding the current environment a robust place to be for businesses of all sizes.
What legal and business risks are companies paying much closer attention to today than they were just a few years ago?
AI is being implemented in a lot of ways. For our law firm, there are opportunities to leverage AI to improve the way we practice and deliver services to clients, but you have to figure out where it makes sense to deploy those tools and where it does not.
If you can leverage the human talent you have and augment those capabilities using AI, that is a great thing. For example, when clients are managing huge databases of contracts and want to identify agreements with particular provisions, AI can do a first pass that otherwise would require a lawyer, which is expensive.
Of course, you have to manage AI actively. You cannot trust everything coming out of it. In our business, it is not just about getting the right answer. It is also about protecting client data so you are not using one client’s information to do another client’s work. We are evaluating hundreds of tools across legal research, document review, and back-office functions to determine where AI adds value without creating unnecessary risk.
Our clients expect us to figure out how to implement these tools. If we keep doing things the way we always have, we are not taking full advantage of technology to deliver better service at a reasonable price.
How are you seeing AI-related risk play out in the legal profession?
We read about issues all the time because they are reported. Lawyers have cited cases that do not exist because AI produced a brief they did not review carefully. Some people made mistakes early on, and the rest of us are learning from those experiences. It is a cautionary tale to be really careful with these tools.
The RTP area is a particularly exciting place to be because we have all the major technology players here. They have substantial teams working on AI, and many of the people developing those technologies are based in this region.
What has supported Raleigh-Durham’s long-term growth as an innovation market?
The Raleigh-Durham area has always been seen as a safe place to invest. Investors, particularly in real estate, have viewed this as a great place to put capital. As a result, we continued to grow through periods that were difficult elsewhere.
Regarding sectors, the life sciences have exploded, alongside biotech and pharmaceuticals, and we also have a strong high-tech sector. Much of that success was made possible through long-standing partnerships among industry, outstanding universities, and a North Carolina government that has consistently supported growth. Those pieces came together to create an ecosystem that has become a wonderful place to build a career.
When I first came here from the Washington, D.C., area, people asked why North Carolina. Today, you do not have to explain it anymore. People know why you are here.
My current law firm reflects that change. About seven years ago, Raleigh became one of our firm’s strategic markets. We opened an office, have grown significantly, and there is now a national perception that Raleigh is one of the places you want to be if you are building a truly national, full-service firm.
How has intellectual property become a more strategic business asset for companies seeking investment and long-term growth?
If you want to raise money, you need commercially significant intellectual property that demonstrates a competitive advantage. That has always been true, particularly in life sciences, where it is extremely difficult to raise significant capital without strong intellectual property.
Recently, however, the rules of the game are changing. There is new leadership at the Patent Office, new policies, and new approaches to implementing them. Businesses have to stay on top of those changes and adjust their strategies accordingly.
One example is post-grant review. We have already seen a significant reduction in those proceedings under the current Patent Office leadership. That affects how companies think about protecting and managing their intellectual property.
Strong patents continue to encourage research, development, and commercialization. Smart companies are investing heavily in intellectual assets, whether those become patents, trade secrets, copyrights, or trademarks. Those assets remain critical to raising capital and supporting long-term growth.
In high-tech, some argue that innovation moves so quickly that filing patents is less important. My view is that companies should continue building intellectual property portfolios because those assets provide important strategic value as technologies evolve.
Where do you see the greatest opportunities for North Carolina to strengthen its position as a center for innovation and business growth?
We are on the right track. We have the momentum and everything we need. We just have to keep going. We cannot get distracted by the background noise. We have to keep our eyes focused on the ball, keep moving our businesses and communities forward, and continue doing what has worked for the last 30 years.
What are your top priorities from a leadership perspective inside the law firm over the next three to five years?
Culture is what it all comes down to for us. We want to continue growing across the country while remaining true to our values of collegiality and working together across practice groups and offices to provide the best possible service to our clients.
We also want to continue providing a great place for people to work. We have a lot of great lawyers doing great things because they want to be here. We have a vision, we have a strategy, and it is a super exciting place to be. We want to keep that going.
