When you’re registering a copyright, the process is pretty straightforward–you can file it on your lunch break, stress-free. But registering trademarks can get a little more finicky.

Of course, this is a personal choice, but if this is the first time you’re registering a trademark, I wholeheartedly recommend that you hire a trademark attorney.

Here’s why:

Reason #1 To Hire A Trademark Attorney: You want the most bang for your buck.

Let me make something clear; you need an attorney, not a litigator. And a trademark attorney won’t cost you a ton of money in the grand scheme of things, especially when you consider that you’re registering your intellectual property!

They’ll know how to get things done efficiently, and they’ll save you time and effort (and earn you cash) down the road if/when your trademarked IP gets stolen and used for profit.

Reason #2 To Hire A Trademark Attorney: They know how to talk to the trademark office.

In my experience, when you register a trademark, there can be a lot of back-and-forth between the trademark office and you. If you’re filing the registration alone, there are a hundred things that could go wrong:

• You don’t know the answer to the question the trademark office is asking
• You’re on vacation and you miss the correspondence
• You forget to respond
• An important piece of mail gets buried under a stack of junk mail and lost forever

…you get the picture. When you bring an attorney into the picture, everything is streamlined. They know how to answer every question in their sleep, and they’ll stay on top of correspondence like it’s their job (because it is).

Reason #3 To Hire A Trademark Attorney: They know what’s around the corner.

When you’re registering a trademark, especially if it’s for the first time, you won’t necessarily know about all the issues that could come up. And it’s not your job to know.

Trademark attorneys, on the other hand, have done this all before and can see around the corner much better than you can.

Reason #4 To Hire A Trademark Attorney: They can help you get your feet wet.

If you’re dead-set on registering future trademarks on your own, you should still consider hiring a trademark attorney to help you with the first one. That way, you can see how the process should go, you can learn how to answer those tricky questions, and you can get comfortable with the process.

After that, if you feel up to it, you can go it alone with confidence and poise.

To sum up, deciding whether or not to hire a trademark attorney is a personal decision, and I can only recommend that you do what’s best for you. In my experience, though, a trademark attorney can make a complicated process painless–so give it some serious consideration.

Photo credit: rawpixel.com//Bram Naus