Founding Attorney / Trademark Lawyer
I never planned to be a trademark lawyer. I never even took a trademark course in law school.
But after I started my law firm back in 2005, I started learning about marketing and branding. Eventually, I began to realize how important protecting your intellectual property really was.
But let’s go back in time a bit to where it all started…
After I graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, I ventured off to the big city of Philadelphia to work at an investment firm. I had never given law school much of a thought until 1999, when Hurricane Floyd hit the east coast. Anyone who lived in North Carolina at the time probably remembers that storm.
It hit us just as hard up in Philly, and my apartment was flooded – I lost thousands of dollars of furniture and electronics. And learned a hard lesson about why it is important to carry renter’s insurance (I didn’t have it at the time). As a result, I got into a legal fight with my landlord (a lawyer) about who was responsible for the damage (I lost).
But as a result of this one incident, I decided that I would never be taken advantage of again because I didn’t understand the law. So in 2001 I packed up and headed to law school.
My First Years of Practice
I enjoyed law school immensely. And it was during my time at Ohio State that I first started learning about alternative forms of dispute resolution, such as mediation and various negotiation strategies. After I graduated, I moved south to Florida where I took and passed the bar exam.
After passing the bar, becoming a family law attorney was the last thing I planned on doing. My focus was to give law firm life a try for a couple of years and then eventually venture out on my own.
I started with the public defender’s office in Seminole County, Florida, where I quickly learned how to try cases in front of juries. I was literally handed a stack of files and sent to court on my first day of work. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was in those courtrooms that I started to realize that I could be a voice for my clients and effect positive change in their lives.
After about a year at the PD’s office, I went to work for a more traditional law firm, defending hospitals against medical malpractice. Aside from not enjoying representing a faceless entity, I soon realized that I missed the days of being in court and representing individuals whose lives I could directly impact and help.
So at the end of 2005, I left firm life behind and started my first solo practice in Orlando Florida.
I Started as a “Domestic” Lawyer… ugh.
There are some attorneys who say they chose family law, I can honestly say that family law chose me. I initially rejected the thought of being a family law attorney. But shortly after I started my practice, another lawyer in my building started to send me all of his “domestic” cases, as he liked to call them. I needed money to pay the bills, so I took them. Before I knew it, my firm was busier than I could possibly imagine and we were a full-fledged family law firm.
What I found from this experience is that I saw my Mother in many of my female clients. These women were in the process of becoming single mothers with little kids and a one-income household. They needed the financial support of their ex-husbands, and their ex-husbands had no interest in paying any support at all.
After several years, my wife and I decided that we needed a change. We didn’t want to raise a family in central Florida, and I didn’t want to handle family law matters forever. We looked for a new home and eventually stumbled upon North Carolina.
The Move to North Carolina
In 2009, we moved to Cary and I was forced to take another bar exam. In 2010 I re-launched my law practice as The Hart Law Firm. By now my Wife was pregnant with our first child and once again, the family law cases started coming to me. Ugh.
From 2010 through 2016, I didn’t do much to grow the law firm. We had two more children and my Mom passed away from cancer. Sometimes life is more important than building a business, and those years were definitely a strange period in my life. I didn’t sleep much, life was chaotic, and I took on fewer cases because of everything else going on around me.
I dabbled in some other practice areas along the way and decided to transition away from family law cases entirely (although it took 5 years to finally make the switch to full-time trademark work).
I started a YouTube Channel in 2015 that has now grown to over 145,000 subs (and counting). This channel completely changed my life and the trajectory of my firm.
As I gained more notoriety with the channel, I also started receiving calls from people needing help with LLC’s and trademarks.
As a result, I started the slow process of shutting down the family law practice and began building a practice devoted to helping small businesses and online entrepreneurs build, grow and protect their dreams.
At the end of 2021 I stopped taking family law clients entirely and transitioned into a full-service trademark law firm.
The Future of The Hart Law Firm (aka Hawthorn Law®)
“An entrepreneur is someone who will jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down.”
Reid Hoffman, Founder of Linked In
About a year after my Mom passed away, I started to put more focus into the law firm. We started to experiment with different systems and fee structures. We began actively looking for ways to improve the way we practice law and provide value to our clients.
Although we have been handling trademark cases since 2015, The Hart Law Firm is currently in a growth stage. No more stagnation. We have big plans for the firm moving forward into 2023 and beyond.
In addition, I am currently working on a free online training to walk client’s through the process of getting a trademark, and in the next few months we plan to begin offering additional legal workshops, webinars, and DIY information to help cost-conscious prospects to educate themselves about trademarks and their legal options.
We also started a podcast called “The Legal Jim” to further educate the public on trademark law (for non-lawyers).
Personal Stuff
My wife Donna and I have three awesome children who are currently ages 12, 10, and 8. We resided in Cary, North Carolina from 2009 until 2022 when we relocated to Lisbon, Portugal! We love to hike, travel, cook (we are all vegetarians), drink coffee, go camping, and enjoy the history of the fourth oldest city in Europe.
My hobbies include jogging with our lab, Lucy (although she has a hard time keeping up), reading, spending time with family, fantasy football, and watching the Browns, Indians, Cavs and Buckeyes (when I can – 7pm start times are now midnight for me! 😜).
Necessary Trademark Lawyer Bio
I attended The Ohio State State University Moritz College of Law, graduating in 2004. After passing the Florida Bar, I worked for the 18th Circuit Public Defender’s Office in Sanford, Florida before joining a medical malpractice firm in Winter Park.
In 2009, we moved to Cary, North Carolina where we lived until mid-2022 when we moved overseas. Jim passed the North Carolina Bar in 2010 and has been operating The Hart Law Firm ever since.
Areas of Practice
Trademark Registration
Opposition Proceedings
Cancellation Proceedings
LLC Filings (all 50 states)
Registered Agent Service (all 50 states)
Trademark Monitoring and Enforcement
Bar Admissions
Florida (2004)
North Carolina (2010)
Education
The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, J.D. 2004
Case Western Reserve University School of Law 2001-2002
University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School 2000
Ohio Wesleyan University B.A. 1998