Judge Richard Linn first pointed me to Louis Tompros years ago, when he told me my entrepreneurial approach to breaking into patent litigation reminded him of one of his former clerks. The story he shared stayed with me: Louis created his own chance to argue at the Federal Circuit by stepping into a pro bono inventor appeal.

In this episode, we explore how Louis has built durable edge through high-agency adjacent bets:

Agency

• create your own reps instead of waiting for permission
• take manageable risks to accelerate learning
• use pro bono work, teaching, and relationship-building to create career-accelerating opportunities

Adjacency

• bounded adjacent bets strengthen the core rather than distract from it
• trial and appellate work sharpen each other
• patent, copyright, and trademark work inform each other
• plaintiff and defense work reveal the other side’s blind spots

Teaching

• teaching forces you back to first principles
• it makes you more creative as a practitioner
• in a mistrust-heavy courtroom, the best advocates help the audience feel capable of deciding

Client perspective

• the client is the fourth audience
• you can win the case and still miss what matters most to the client

Gift-giving

• long-term business development starts with doing useful things for people before there is any immediate return
• relationships compound on an uneven timeline
• doing good work and doing the right thing are not separate strategies

The throughline is simple: create your own reps, make bounded adjacent bets, and let the learning compound.

About the host:

Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.