The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office https://uspto.gov is on a hiring binge. The Trademark side of the office https://uspto.gov/trademark hired 60 new attorneys in December, 2016. Now that President Trump’s hiring freeze has ended, the Trademark Office is resuming its attorney recruitment and anticipates hiring between 40-60 additional attorneys this year.
You can expect steady Trademark Office hiring well into the future. The office has even hired a statistician to project how many attorneys it will need in future years. The statistician says that hiring will curve upward into the 2020s. The office generally hires its Trademark Examining Attorneys fresh out of law school.
Why the legal hiring binge? In addition to a steady increase in the number of trademark and service mark applications originating in the U.S., there has been an explosion of applications from China. One Trademark Examining Attorney told me that he and his colleagues current workload consists of 50 percent Chinese applications.
The Trademark Office employed 265 attorneys in 2003. Today, the office has more than 600 lawyers.
Trademark Examining Attorneys enjoy two employment perks that are unavailable to the vast majority of U.S. government lawyers:
- After 18 months, they can work from home and do not have to report into the headquarters office in Alexandria, Virginia. “Home” can be anywhere…and you can work in your pajamas if you wish.
- They can earn handsome bonuses if they meet an application processing annual quota.