Tampa law firm goes national with New York, Boston, D.C. offices
The next killer app doesn’t just have to provide a killer service. It has to have a killer name.
And that, said Andrew Adams, is where a trademark and intellectual property firm like Stanton IP Law Firm comes in.
“Everybody’s looking for a clever name that’s unique to the market, to get through the din of everything we’ve heard,” said Adams, a senior attorney at Stanton. “More people are getting online and trying to trademark what they have and sell it in a unique way. It’s funny how the human brain keeps coming up with more and more unique ways of saying something that isn’t just an exact copy.”
As the trademark law market grows, so will Stanton. The boutique Tampa law firm decided this summer to expand up the East Coast, opening offices in New York, Boston and Washington, D.C.
It’s a major expansion for a firm that has about a half-dozen specialized attorneys in Tampa Bay. Adams, who led the growth effort, said the company hopes to have 10 to 15 attorneys in each of those markets.
“A lot of times, it’s not how you’re fishing, it’s where,” he said. “You have to go to court in those areas, you have to be licensed in those areas, your insurance is based out of those areas. It’s growth, and there’s a cost to it, but we’re focused on where there are bigger markets for us to grow into.”
New York is a financial and funding hub. Boston is a huge market in health care technology. Washington is home to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, as well as defense and bureaucratic institutions. Down the line, Adams said, Stanton will explore opening offices in California and Austin, Texas.
But the company is not looking to move its home base from Tampa Bay, where founder Thomas Stanton attended the University of South Florida and Stetson University College of Law. Adams called Tampa “an up-and-coming city in the tech scene, for its size,” with a tech-entrepreneurship landscape that’s more collaborative in nature than some other markets he’s seen.
“We see a lot of similar-type tech companies to our Tampa Bay market in the Boston, D.C. and New York, and we feel that we can help recreate what we helped here with these small tech companies,” Adams said. “We don’t have the baggage of a large firm that has to do certain things to make their end-year (hours). We’re more nimble and we’re more business-focused, and that really helps.”
The hands-on approach of a smaller firm like Stanton, Adams said, may help it stand out in those larger markets.
“Our end goal is not just billable hours, but to help a company grow — which will lead to billable hours,” he said. “But our main focus is helping customers get what they need done.”
