Intellectual Property

3 Questions For A Leading Trademark Filer (Part I)

Breaking through in an undoubtedly crowded field is something we all can applaud, especially those of us who know how difficult it is.

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Recently, I was fortunate to have had a chance to conduct a written interview with a prominent trademark attorney, Xavier Morales. While prior to this interview I personally had never met Xavier, his prolific filing activity on behalf of clients has long been recognized in the legal media. In 2010, The Trademark Insider named Xavier the #1 Trademark Attorney in the United States as determined by the number of trademark applications filed in the previous year. Over his career, he has filed over 5,000 trademark applications with the United States Patent & Trademark Office. Xavier founded his trademark law practice in January 2007 with the goal of providing intellectual property expertise to entrepreneurs and businesses around the country. To this day, his law practice emphasizes trademark registration, counseling, and enforcement.

I very much welcome the opportunity to share Xavier’s insights with this audience. While my own firm does its share of trademark work, it is always good to hear from someone at the forefront of a particular practice. Particularly when they have managed to build their practice using innovative marketing techniques, on top of a significant base of legal experience from their time as a Biglaw associate. For these reasons and more, I believe Xavier’s responses are worth our serious consideration as IP lawyers.

As usual, I have added some brief commentary to Xavier’s answers below, but have otherwise presented his answers as he provided them.

1) How important has secureyourtrademark.com been in your business development efforts?

XM: It’s hard to overestimate the significant role the domain name and website have played in my business development efforts.  When I first started my practice, I had one client that found me through Guru.com, which at the time was a popular place online to find and hire freelancers.  As it turns out, that client is still with me and still gives me work, but I knew that I needed something more than a freelancer profile to really ramp up my business.  So I ended up spending half my savings at the time on a web design company to create a nice looking site, and I spent the other half of my savings on Google Adwords marketing.  It was a huge risk for me, but I started getting clients left and right shortly thereafter. Almost every dollar I earned would then go back into promoting the website. At some point, I realized that I was basically just spending too much on Adwords, and that’s when I started looking into SEO. And I guess you can say that the rest is history.

My website today is much different than it was when I first opened for business, but I’m still following the same tenets of good web design, good SEO, and a little bit of Adwords marketing.  I’ve been profitable every year since starting my practice, and I owe it all to the website and the domain name. I would estimate that about 75 percent of my client list comes from my website, while the other 25 percent comes from referrals from the original 75 percent.  So in a sense, the website traffic has allowed me to create a self-sustaining business, and for that I’m truly grateful. Without the website, I would never have achieved the kind of success that I have now.

GK: You can’t read Xavier’s response and not think that he should be speaking with law firms on a weekly basis on how to successfully market online. Considering that is where customer attention is — particularly for practices that don’t depend on work assignments from in-house counsel at large corporations — there is nary a firm that could not benefit from considering how to mimic Xavier’s approach in a way that makes sense for the firm’s business objectives.

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As I see it, the first — albeit minimal, even for a risk-averse lawyer — risk that Xavier took was signing up for Guru.com. At the same time, just letting that community of potential customers know that he was open to gaining their business helped launch the next phase of his marketing plan. Critically, Xavier realized that he needed a more robust platform than just Guru.com to showcase his wares. So he built a fancy website — the online equivalent of dressing like the boss — and also invested in promoting it. More importantly, once the website showed success in attracting clients, he doubled down on investing in the marketing that was actually working for him, while also pivoting from a more expensive marketing approach (Adwords) to a more balanced one (SEO, sprinkled with Adwords). What a legal marketing success story.

Of course, Xavier would never have enjoyed that success without also delivering on the legal work itself. But that’s a given in this competitive industry. It is the marketing approach and discipline that sets Xavier apart, in my view. While trademark prosecution might be particularly conducive to a online-focused marketing strategy, there are lessons for all IP lawyers in how Xavier crafted his marketing strategy and doubled down on the marketing approach that worked for him. Breaking through in an undoubtedly crowded field is something we all can applaud, especially those of us who know how difficult it is.

We will continue with Xavier’s answers to questions 2 and 3 next week.

Please feel free to send comments or questions to me at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or via Twitter: @gkroub. Any topic suggestions or thoughts are most welcome.

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Gaston Kroub lives in Brooklyn and is a founding partner of Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique, and Markman Advisors LLC, a leading consultancy on patent issues for the investment community. Gaston’s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and related counseling, with a strong focus on patent matters. You can reach him at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or follow him on Twitter: @gkroub.

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