Robert A. Spar, a partner at Saul Ewing in Baltimore, is committed to helping his law firm increase its stable of patent attorneys.
That means invoking headhunters, placing ads in Philadelphia and Washington publications and sending a five-member team to scout at Bio, an international trade convention recently held in Boston.
He'd like to find enough specialized attorneys to nearly double the firm's life science practice, which now employs 35.
Good luck.
Competition is fierce, because legal offices across the country are trying to do precisely the same thing.
"It's really hard to find patent lawyers in the Baltimore area," Spar said. "We're constantly looking. Whenever we can find a good, qualified person, we're going to bring them in."
There are multiple reasons for the high demand and scant supply of attorneys schooled in the intricacies of patent law, and they are rooted in an explosion in the number of applications and patents issued over two decades.
Applications have more than tripled in that time, to more than 440,000 last year, with about 184,000 patents being issued, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Meanwhile, about 3 percent of the nation's 1.1 million active lawyers specialize in the demanding field, which requires scientific or technical expertise in addition to a law degree. Patent lawyers also must pass a specialized test on top of the regular bar exam. Maryland has about 230 intellectual property lawyers, according to the state bar association.
As a result, lawyers with such training are a precious commodity in a world where intellectual property has never been more important and can mean a company's survival.
"It's high stakes," said San Francisco-based recruiter Avis Caravello.
"The IP rights of a company really are the heart and soul of a company. A loss could be astronomical. The level of talent that's required to protect those rights is very high," Caravello said.
But the demand for patent lawyers vastly outweighs the supply, she said.
"If I had the right ones, I could place as many as there were hours in the day," said Caravello, a lawyer and principal at the search consultant firm that bears her name. "When I get a candidate like that, it really is `Where do you want to work?'"
