Feras Mousilli is the Managing Partner at Lloyd & Mousilli, a law firm he co-founded that specializes in intellectual property, startup law, and technology transactions for businesses of all sizes in the US and internationally. In addition to his JD, Feras holds a BS in biomedical engineering and an MSE in computer science. A registered US Patent Attorney, Feras has served as Senior Corporate Counsel for companies like Apple and Dell, advising on intellectual property, advertising, product development, and litigating patent law at DLA Piper.
How do you merge technical expertise with a passion for justice to create a meaningful impact in the legal arena? What does it take to build a law firm that truly empowers small businesses while challenging industry giants?
According to Feras Mousilli, a registered patent attorney and specialist in law and entrepreneurship, the answer lies in empathy, collaboration, and creative problem-solving. He highlights that successful lawyers aren’t just experts in the law but also skilled translators, capable of simplifying complex issues and aligning with their clients’ risk profiles. Feras shares how his technical background in biomedical engineering and computer science uniquely equips him to connect with clients in the science and technology industries. By leveraging a solutions-driven approach, he and his team have achieved groundbreaking results, including defending small businesses against corporate giants.
In this episode of 15 Minutes, host Chad Franzen speaks with Feras Mousilli, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Lloyd & Mousilli, to discuss how empathy and innovation redefine practicing law. Feras shares insights into building a client-focused law firm, the art of effective negotiation, and lessons learned from his international teaching experiences. Feras also gives advice to aspiring lawyers on gaining practical experience and cultivating a solutions-oriented mindset.
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Intro 0:01
You’re listening to 15 Minutes where we feature community leaders sharing what the rest of us should know but likely don’t.
Chad Franzen 0:12
Hi, Chad Franzen here host of Share Your Voice, where we talk with top notch law firms and lawyers about what it takes to grow a successful law practice. This episode is brought to you by Gladiator Law Marketing, delivering tailor made services to help you accomplish your objectives and maximize your growth potential to have a successful marketing campaign and make sure you’re getting the best ROI your firm needs to have a better website and better content. Gladiator Law Marketing uses artificial intelligence, machine learning and decades of experience to outperform the competition to learn more. Go to gladiatorlawmarketing.com where you can schedule a free marketing consultation. My guest today is Feras Mousilli, Managing Partner at Lloyd & Mousilli. He is a registered patent attorney with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He has experience in patent law, startup law, business law, corporate law, trademark law, legal consulting and intellectual property law. He has also been recognized for his expertise by Super Lawyers chambers USA and Who’s Who, Who’s Who Legal. He was awarded the Fulbright Specialist designation for his contributions to law and entrepreneurship, and served as visiting professor in Medellin, Colombia. Feras, it’s great to talk to you today. How are you?
Feras Mousilli 1:18
It’s a pleasure to connect with you. Chad, thank you for having me on your show.
Chad Franzen 1:22
Yeah, hey, great to have you tell me how, how and when did you know that you wanted to become an attorney?
Feras Mousilli 1:29
Great question. So I was actually in the sixth grade when I ended up getting a future attorney award for my teachers, and I think that they saw that I had this sense of justice and righteousness, and that anytime I saw anyone being taken advantage of, I would jump in and defend them and argue that they’re being unjustly treated. So I think my my teachers recognized that very early on.
Chad Franzen 1:54
Wow, that is awesome. So did you have like personality traits that they thought maybe would lend to skills that would be a be good for an attorney.
Feras Mousilli 2:06
I like to think that it was more than just being argumentative, which my 13 year old niece thinks is the hallmark of a good lawyer. So she’s like, if you can argue, you can be a great lawyer. But what I think is having compassion, having understanding, having love for someone else, and that really translates in the love that we bring and passion that we bring on behalf of our clients and their causes.
Chad Franzen 2:34
You’ve had a pretty interesting journey. So, you know, fast forward from sixth grade up to maybe graduating from, you know, getting your getting your bachelor’s degree, kind of take me through your path toward the legal industry.
Feras Mousilli 2:46
So I’ve had a very atypical path. I studied biomedical engineering and computer science at Johns Hopkins University, where I was convinced that I was going to be the doctor of the family, or at least that was my father’s pipe treatments. And the more that I ended up seeing and volunteering at shock trauma centers and seeing Life Flight victims come in, I decided that the emotional roller coaster of being a physician just wasn’t in the cards for me. So I ended up doing a Master’s in Computer Science Engineering at Johns Hopkins as well, and ended up making a determination that I was going to take the LSAT and did very, very well on that, ended up getting a scholarship, and found myself at UT Law. So when you have a technical background like I have, you’re immediately pulled into intellectual property and patent law, and that’s how I made my way and became president of the IP law society, chair of the IP symposium. And really, really have a passion for computers. I grew up reading the MS DOS manual from cover to cover. You know, for most of you, they have no idea what that means for your viewers, but it’s, it’s a real passion of mine.
Chad Franzen 4:17
So obviously that equips you to do the kind of law that you, that you practice, does the way you have to think in terms of, you know, computers and things like that, has that has that helped you in terms of the way you think as an attorney.
Feras Mousilli 4:30
I think it helps you connect better with scientific minds and engineers to be Very, very straightforward, to be able to understand the parlance and understand the difference between object code and, you know, source code is also an important distinction that most lawyers or laymen don’t really understand. So thinking in terms of systems and exposures, and I. The like for the underlying, you know, wow, in that black box really, really is helpful.
Chad Franzen 5:08
So as I mentioned, you are a managing partner at Lloyd & Mousilli. How did this, this firm, kind of come about?
Feras Mousilli 5:15
So it’s great because Jason Lloyd was my best friend from law school, we became friends literally day one in our small group section, and we had these aspirations about building our own practice that really differentiated itself from big law. And while we both took our path, you know, through the big law ringer. I guess, if you will, because of the billable hours and kind of a lot of the the toxic cultures that ends up, you know, permeating throughout, you know, these, these bigger firms, and kind of focus on billable hours and profitability. Um, ultimately, it was a passion project. We wanted to be able to work with small and medium science businesses and help them find solutions to their problems, not just build them for answering their questions.
Chad Franzen 6:13
Hey, just out of curiosity, at what point was it during or after your your master’s degree that you decided to apply for law school?
Feras Mousilli 6:20
So it was really interesting, because while I was finishing up my master’s, I had ended up receiving job offers from very, very prestigious consulting firms, but there was the.com bust that was happening at the very same time. So you kind of had this perfect storm where the technology industry was seeing a retraction, and at the same time, I ended up getting offered this scholarship to end up going to UT Law. So I felt like the stars were aligning, and it just made sense to pursue this passion. And my father, may he rest in peace, was always an advocate of schooling and advanced schooling. And he recognized that once you ended up going out and earning an income, it would be very, very difficult to go back to school. So he was a big advocate of Advanced Studies.
Chad Franzen 7:14
Yeah, yeah. Very nice. So you, you hold a registered patent attorney credential from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Can you describe the process of becoming a registered patent attorney and then the significance of that credential?
Feras Mousilli 7:26
Sure, I think most people don’t recognize that being a patent attorney requires a separate bar examination, and most people don’t even qualify to sit for that bar examination. So to qualify to even take the Patent Bar Exam, you have to have either a hard sciences degree, a physics, a chemistry type of degree, or an engineering degree that ends up conferring a Bachelor of Science on you to be able to even sit and take the exam to be a patent attorney requires that you’re licensed as an attorney in any of the states, and then, once you’ve taken this Patent Bar exam that is got the lowest passage rate of Any bar exam because of its marriage of legal jargon with techno mumbo jumbo, if you will, right very, very specific claim construction at that point. Once you’ve fulfilled and passed that bar, you can hold yourself out as a registered patent attorney.
Chad Franzen 8:39
So as I mentioned you, you now have expertise in patent law, obviously, startup law, business law, corporate law, trademark law, legal, consulting and intellectual property law. What is kind of a typical day look like for you?
Feras Mousilli 8:52
The beauty is that every day is absolutely different. And I’ll tell you that we are working right now with a series B funded company about their next stages, right whether they end up looking at a potential acquisition or lateral move. We had conversations just this morning about international patent portfolio expansions on behalf of some of our Ukrainian clients. So then coming back to trademarks, trademarks is also a sincere passion of ours. I I was just told that I am the number 15 trademark attorney in the US, according to some AI statistics, very, very cool news that I just found out, but trademarks and building a trademark and brand portfolio are also a very, very cool aspect of, you know, our week in and week out.
Chad Franzen 9:52
Yeah, very nice. You also have a passion for teaching law. Is that right?
Feras Mousilli 9:57
It is. It is. And I think that’s something that I ended up in. Parenting from my mother’s side of the family. So always been a huge fan of academia, and because of our work in Ukraine, I ended up getting nominated by Professor Charles Whitehead at Cornell University for this Fulbright program. Ended up getting an award, and have taught literally around the world. So I was teaching technology, law and commercialization in Kyiv, Ukraine at three universities there, most notably Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Taras Shevchenko and Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, before the full scale Russian invasion, when the US State Department ordered all US personnel to evacuate the country, at which point I ended up having a another appointment in Medellin, Colombia, where I ended up teaching at the University of Antioquia and holding their very first pitch competition at that university. What did that look like? It was amazing. It ended up testing the limits of my Spanish. I was mercifully provided with a teaching assistant that was fluent in both languages. So my lectures in Spanish were a bit lacking, but I was still able to convey and connect with the students, and they were ecstatic that these concepts of what a traditional Silicon Valley startup and what the model looked Like could end up potentially transforming the economy. And I’ve had a passion and love for teaching. It’s come across, whether it’s there, whether it was at Istanbul University, or whether I ended up teaching a technology transactions class back at my alma mater, at The University of Texas School of Law, with one of the adjuncts that I had worked with as well.
Chad Franzen 12:04
Wow, that’s amazing. So you’ve you had basically a job where you had to speak Spanish, and I’m gonna say you didn’t speak Spanish in Kyiv.
Feras Mousilli 12:13
No, unfortunately, not. But I did end up learning Russian, and I have a basic understanding of Ukrainian as well, but English is also a very widely spoken at these top universities, amongst these stellar students, really just huge inspiration.
Chad Franzen 12:34
So does having kind of a knack, maybe, for lack of a better word, I mean, pick up languages and be able to work while using those languages. Does that help you as an attorney?
Feras Mousilli 12:44
I think that’s what we do as lawyers, right? We’re essentially translating concepts right from legalese into plain English, right? And I think I was literally talking to one of our law clerks this morning about the function of a successful attorney being able to take very complex topics and providing them and simplifying them in a way that a layman can understand them. And the best example of a command of a topic is your ability to simplify it in the most easily digestible terms.
Chad Franzen 13:21
So when you first started Lloyd & Mousilli, what were the early days like? How did you go about getting clients things like that?
Feras Mousilli 13:27
It was absolutely amazing, because I had one of my ex colleagues from Dell who would become assistant general counsel at Brocade Communications reach out to me and tell me that, hey, Feras, I know that you’re an expert in these cloud computing contracts. We have a lot of work in this regard. Do you know anyone that would be able to help out with this? And this is while I was still at Apple, and you know, I asked how much work she had and whether she would be able to direct this to my firm, and, you know, she said, Absolutely, I know your work, and I trust you, we’d be happy to do that. So immediately out the gate, we had kind of, you know, a namesake client that we could end up tying to and working on. So it is not your typical law firm kind of scrouging for, you know, run of the mill, you know, solos or folks for clients. So was very, very blessed in that regards.
Chad Franzen 14:35
So you had, you obviously had, you know, expertise in law and in other fields. Was there anything that was kind of like, I didn’t realize? Was there anything that you didn’t know, that you didn’t know as you kind of were running your own business?
Feras Mousilli 14:47
Oh, absolutely. I mean, you were literally, you know, changing a tire on a moving vehicle. I had never filed a trademark application before going out on my own. Even though I had the expertise related to the subject matter, the mechanics of law and the business of law are very different from the practice of law and what academia ends up leaving you ready to pursue. So definitely had a lot of those instances, but I’ve been very blessed to have a team of experts, of people that are passionate and that we take every one of these cases as if it’s our own right. And I think it’s really important that we’re looking for a righteous outcome instead of just what outcome may make sense from a dollars and cents perspective.
Chad Franzen 15:47
I saw on your website that you have a executive coaching philosophy, which is let let go, boss. What does that mean? Can you kind of elaborate on that?
Feras Mousilli 15:55
So I think one of the key philosophies that we espouse at Lloyd & Mousilli is that every person should be able to rise to their fullest potential. And for someone to be able to grow, you need to give them space. And the idea is that as a boss, as the managing partner of the firm, I have to be able to let go and let my team run with their respective practice areas. We’ve got four practice leads that are absolutely amazing, and we’ve structured the firm in such a way that, you know, everyone’s able to operate almost as a silo, right? That they don’t need to be looking at a top down design so that, God forbid, anything happened to anyone, everything continues to operate seamlessly.
Chad Franzen 16:50
Was that always your philosophy, or did you have to grow into it?
Feras Mousilli 16:54
And I think I’ve got to give my brother a lot of credit for that, because recognizing as a lawyer, you are a control freak, right? These folks are Type A personalities. We want to have visibility and decision making on every single element of every single client’s case, and that’s simply impossible. So what we found is that allowing the subject matter experts to run with the case, to have the paralegals, the legal assistance, be able to have that first line of sight and enable them to make decisions, was key, right? And a lot of other firms have this kind of top down philosophy where you have to escalate a decision before you can end up pushing it back down, you know, to those that reporting structure, but we’ve enabled everyone to be able to make the best decision on behalf of the client that they know how. And what I’ve tried to do is Institute values and principles for the firm to recognize do right by the client. How do we get the best result, regardless of a particular client’s ability to spend what their budgets are? And this has led to some absolutely amazing outcomes, literally, David V Goliath cases that we’ve been involved in, where we’ve been able to use our small, agile team to be able to overcome much larger, much better financed opponents at some of the biggest law firms in the world.
Chad Franzen 18:36
Very, very cool. So do you have an example of one of those David v Goliath kind of cases that stands out to us, maybe one of your favorites, absolutely.
Feras Mousilli 18:44
And I think one of the best is when Toys R Us, the company that everyone had thought had gone bankrupt and had essentially sold their IP assets to a private equity firm, was going around and suing all of these Mom and Pop toy stores around the country, essentially driving them out of business simply because they might have had a logo that was multi colored. So Toys R Us had the audacity to think that any kind of multi colored logo within a children’s space was their exclusive domain, and we were able to represent a small toy store that was family owned, that had four locations in Houston, Texas. And I’m not allowed to reveal all of the elements because of the settlement agreement, but just know that what happened was literally an impossibility, where the plaintiff was put on the defensive related to their own trademark, and ultimately, our client ended up getting a settlement, and everybody walked away. So. So absolutely historic settlement and result on behalf of a small toy store that was literally going against a global giant.
Chad Franzen 20:12
Wow, wow, incredible. Very nice. So, you know, when a situation like that comes along, you know, a mammoth Corporation against the mom and pop type thing, mom and pop like business, what is your initial reaction, like we got this, or what’s your what’s kind of your mindset when those cases come along?
Feras Mousilli 20:33
I think the way that we look at a case is very different from a typical analysis. So a lot of folks will end up looking at a case and seeing all of the things wrong with it. We like to end up looking at, how can we end up leveraging intellectual property specifically to use in a form of legal judo, to end up overcoming a larger opponent, and a lot of times again, they use that that Toys R Us example, they have this trademark and this trade dress that are their most valuable assets. So whenever you end up taking someone’s most valuable asset and putting it at risk, the calculus changes. The same thing has happened in other cases where we represented a small New York City design studio that had designed a new logo and branding for a billion dollar clothing retail company, and that company decided that they didn’t want to end up paying the designers fees. We ended up taking these designs, registering a copyright, and all of a sudden, this billion dollar retailer was committing copyright infringement that had statutory damages of $150,000 per instance, and that, again, lips the dynamics, again, in a way that a small, you know, seemingly powerless, company can end up flipping a much larger opponent.
Chad Franzen 22:14
That’s That’s great. What kind of advice maybe do you give to entrepreneurs who seek legal counsel in areas like intellectual property and startup law.
Feras Mousilli 22:26
I think what’s important is that you align with a lawyer that has a similar risk profile to what you have, because lawyers, by their very nature, are risk averse, right? Most of them will give you the letter of the law and will basically give you some of the potentialities that may come out from not following the law, or, you know, essentially tell you you can’t do that. Our strategy is always to end up finding that path forward. Right don’t point out all of the problems. Point out the solution and let the business person, let that entrepreneur make the decision themselves what risk they’re comfortable with pursuing for their business.
Chad Franzen 23:17
So you have had all kinds of experiences, as we talked about here in your journey, what are your Do you have, maybe goals for the future that you haven’t accomplished yet?
Feras Mousilli 23:25
I think it’s been, you know, a tremendous journey for us. The team is amazing, really. And I, and I use that word with all due intention, from our trademark, our patent, our transactional and disputes teams. What I’m hoping that we end up doing is kind of doubling down on what we’ve been doing right, focusing on these clients and continuing our international expansion.
Chad Franzen 23:57
Okay, great. I saw that you have a passion for playing chess too. Is that right?
Feras Mousilli 24:02
That is correct? My, for me, a lot of these legal cases in negotiation, and I think this is where, if you wanted to ask me my singular passion within law, it’s negotiations, right? And I consider myself a world class negotiator, having the experience to be able to take very, very different situations right, understand where that leverage ends up existing, and how someone might be able to act in a way that can better their position, right, recognizing that a negotiation should be Win win, right, it should not be seen as a zero sum game, because anytime that is the case, then unfortunately, things will end up falling apart at some point. I think that’s really, really important for folks that think that they might have a short term win, but ultimately, those short term wins, where somebody is feeling like they’ve gotten the short end of the stick end up bubbling up later as disputes.
Chad Franzen 25:16
What do you think is one element of negotiation that most people don’t, don’t utilize and that’s why they’re not successful at negotiating, right?
Feras Mousilli 25:26
I think part of it is coming back to that empathy, like, really, like the person that you’re negotiating across from, right? And then move that mentality of of negotiating across from someone to being collaborative, and it literally can take the form of being on the same side of the table, right your position in a negotiating room. Once you’re sitting across the table and you’re literally pushing tape papers back and forth, is adversarial. Sit on the same side. Sit catty corner from each other. Look at the that document from the same perspective, and it really will change the dynamics of that negotiation.
Chad Franzen 26:12
Very nice. Great, great advice. Thanks. Hey, I have one last question for you, but first, tell me how people can find out more about Lloyd & Mousilli.
Feras Mousilli 26:19
Well, we’re pretty much everywhere you want to be. So if you end up going to our website, lloydmousilli.com you can always end up scheduling a free consultation. And that’s something that we also pride ourselves on, is that we provide people with 15 minutes to be able to just have a conversation and get some kind of advice or guidance related to any issue that they might have.
Chad Franzen 26:47
Last question for you, so I know you’ve taught law in multiple universities and multiple countries. What? What advice would you give to a student or students who come to you? Tell me like, this is my thing. This is what I’m going to do. That maybe that maybe that wouldn’t be part of the curriculum like they would only know if they’d had kind of your experience, your path, your background.
Feras Mousilli 27:07
What I tell any of my law students to do is take as many of the clinics and adjunct classes as possible. Make sure that you’re clerking and doing as much work outside of the law school as you possibly can as well, because that’s going to give you the best sense of what your career should end up looking like. And we have a very important element, something called negative knowledge. Knowing how not to do something or what not to do is often as equally valuable as knowing what to do. So recognizing that you don’t want to do criminal law is also something very, very informative. And I’ll tell you that I clerked at the US Attorney’s Office in both the Criminal Appeals section and the civil section as well, end up recognizing what elements I was most interested in, and I also recognize that I didn’t want to work as a government lawyer at that point, and private practice was for me, working in house was also an incredibly informative experience, and recognizing that these are the clients of mine now, and the considerations that they take that they want an answer, a path forward, rather than a legal memo detailing all of the various ways that things can go wrong. They want a recommendation, and they want someone who’s going to stand behind that recommendation, rather than just giving them a menu of options.
Chad Franzen 28:39
Okay, awesome. Hey, Feras, it’s been great to talk to you. Thanks so much for your time. Very interesting conversation. Really appreciate it. Thanks.
Feras Mousilli 28:45
Thank you so much, Chad.
Chad Franzen 28:46
So long everybody.
Outro 28:50
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