Patently Original Attorney Pilots Her Own Business Aircraft Nationwide and Overseas

Kelly Burris had a dream of flying ever since childhood. Pursuing that dream made her an excellent aviator – it also made her a successful and sought-after patent attorney.

The founder and owner of Burris Law, an intellectual property (IP) firm based in Detroit, Burris grew up going to air shows and building model planes with her parents. Her father was a Navy controller on aircraft carriers.

She learned to fly at Western Michigan University, and bought a Beechcraft Debonair in 2004. In 2009, she flew it in the women’s Air Race Classic – and won. Today, she flies a Daher TBM 940 to clients on both coasts, even overseas. And it helped her open the firm’s second office in St. Louis.

“I want the clients to view me as their local counsel,” said Burris. “When a client has an innovation, you have to go and see the product to understand the technology. I can say, ‘I’ll be there tomorrow morning,’ as if I’m right down the street. The TBM is my secret business weapon.”

Paper Planes

She founded her firm in 2016, with two paralegals. Within a year, Burris Law had grown to 10 people. Doubling again, the team now serves nearly 600 clients across the U.S. and Europe.

Burris Law works with the largest aerospace and semiconductor companies, and mid-sized manufacturers. “We even have small clients, individual inventors,” said Evan Sotiriou, a partner who leads the St. Louis office. “We get people protection for their IP, preparing and enforcing patents.”

That is not so easy to do over the phone. “In order for me to understand what this invention does and write a strong patent, I have to see the equipment, talk to the engineers, ask questions. We have to write on the whiteboard,” said Burris. “The client knows we care about what they’re designing, and we’re building a lasting relationship.”

Burris sees flying as an advantage not many other patent attorneys have. The website for Burris Law loads with a video of her flying to visit a client’s testing lab. The firm’s logo is a paper plane. “Creativity and flying, right?” Burris pointed out. “Airplanes are a part of me, and I want our brand to reflect that. I want people to Google me; the first thing they see on the website is an airplane, and they know, she’ll come see us.”

Fly, Fly, Fly

In the early 1980s, when Burris was in high school, she saw astronaut Sally Ride on TV “wearing a spacesuit and she looked so cool.” Aiming to one day fly the Space Shuttle herself, Burris studied aerospace engineering in college, and when she graduated, joined McDonnell Douglas.

“When I hired on, I was in research and development, so I got to spend time on the flight line with the test pilots,” she said. “And then I really caught the flying bug and all I wanted to do was fly, fly, fly.”

An executive at McDonnell Douglas who had become a mentor suggested Burris consider patent law for the next step in her career. “I loved being an engineer,” Burris said, but her mentor explained that patent attorneys need a technical background. “She told me, ‘You’ll be on the leading edge of technology all the time.’”

And Burris realized, if her legal career was successful, she could someday buy an airplane. “I could keep flying,” she said. “I was raised in a blue-collar family and I’m no stranger to hard work. Maybe I could fly my airplane to go see clients, and this would be a great way to meet inventors and get into all kinds of technology.”

Tying Two Offices Together

That was 1994. In 2025, her firm opened a second office in St. Louis, down the street from their largest client, thermal systems manufacturer Watlow Electric Manufacturing Co.

“Watlow is literally two blocks down the street, Kelly’s been representing them for 20 years,” said Sotiriou. “As far as tying the two offices together, I have my laptop, I get on the plane, we just fly up there.”

The new office has hot desks and a conference room that visiting clients can use. Burris recruited the entire St. Louis team from contacts she made decades before in her career. “People will follow Kelly anywhere,” said Sotiriou. “We’ve been talking about a St. Louis office for years. We’re looking to grow.”

The drive between Detroit and St. Louis is nine hours. Flying commercially takes at least five hours, door-to-door. When Burris is flying team members between the offices in the TBM, it is just over an hour flight.

“Having the plane is an amazing thing,” Sotiriou added. “It gives us the opportunity to tie in visits with different clients on the same trip. So, if we have multiple clients in Southern California or Texas, we try to visit all of them.”

Staying on Your Game

Whenever Sotiriou flies with Burris, he is always impressed by her preparation: plotting the route, following the weather, towing the TBM out by herself, pre-flighting the airplane and doing a thorough safety briefing.

“She’s a professional pilot,” he said. “I mean, she’s flown as many hours, and probably more, than some pilots on very large aircraft.”

Burris has over 3,500 flight hours, and flies the TBM on average 200 hours a year for firm business. While the turboprop’s advanced avionics give her the confidence to go down to minimums, her approach to safety is to be aware of risk factors stacking up, and always alert on the flight deck.

“It’s really important that I’m at my best when I’m flying,” she said. “I work out a lot, I drink a lot of water, I don’t drink any alcohol for at least a full 24 hours before a flight. I say no to certain obligations at work so I can get plenty of sleep. You’ve got to be on your game.”

Days in advance of a flight, Burris starts watching the weather, and watching her schedule. She makes all her clients and employees aware that if the weather turns bad or if she is not feeling comfortable, “we just don’t go,” as she said. “We look at the go, no-go criteria: is it at night, is it IMC [instrument meteorological conditions], are you tired, have you flown at night recently? If we hit two or three of those criteria, we’ll reschedule or we’ll drive.”

Burris takes safety seriously because of everything on the line, but also because she worked so hard to become the pilot she is and operate a capable airplane.

Living in Her Hangar

In fact, at one point, her dream was so close that Burris sold her house and moved into her hangar to make the downpayment on the TBM.

“I had put a deposit on the TBM, and I wanted to put a significant amount down,” Burris explained. “I had a nice house in a little suburb of Detroit. And a friend had convinced me to buy a small camper and put it in my hangar as a crash pad.”

The crash pad was really for safety, to get more rest before early morning trips. “And I thought, maybe I’ll sell my house. I can live in the hangar, I’ll have some extra money in the bank to buy the airplane. This is awesome. Well, my sister came by and told me I smelled like a grease pit. But it worked. I was able to buy the TBM, I lived in my hangar for about six months, then moved into a new place that smelled a little nicer.”

Learn more at burrisiplaw.com.

Snapshot

Aircraft: One Daher TBM 940

Base: Headquartered at Michigan’s Ann Arbor Municipal Airport (ARB)

Personnel: Kelly Burris is the owner, founder and pilot.