I recently had an opportunity to talk with Matthew Ladenheim, a board certified specialist in trademark law and chair of the North Carolina State Bar Board of Legal Specialization. Matthew practices at Trego, Hines and Ladenheim, PLLC in Huntersville.

Q: Please tell me where you attended college and law school, and a little bit about your path to your current position?

I attended the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where I studied history and theater. After undergraduate school, I did a gap year in London, UK, where I worked for the London Law Agency in Temple Chambers. I didn’t know it at the time, but that experience was instrumental to the formation of my career path—it was my first introduction to the practice of trademark law. I took the LSAT while I was living in the UK, and returned home to attend the Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law. After law school I moved to Olympia, WA, to complete a clerkship with a justice on the Washington State Supreme Court. Once my clerkship was completed, I set down roots in Charlotte and have been here ever since. After almost 25 years, it seems like home now.

Q: Why did you pursue becoming a board certified specialist?

By mistake, actually. During the early 2000s the Intellectual Property Section of the North Carolina Bar Association was concerned about the growing number of “trademark dabblers” in the Bar. The IP Section formed an investigation committee, and I was on it. Next thing you know, I was on the State Bar Trademark Committee, then the Specialization Drafting Committee. Following that, I chaired the Trademark Committee, then I became a member of the board at large. Now I’ve been installed as the chair of the State Bar’s Board of Legal Specialization—something I never set out to do, but it has been a fantastic journey and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Q: Is certification important in your practice area? How?

Certification is incredibly important for trademark lawyers in North Carolina. Members of the public and the Bar often conflate patent and trademark law. Even though both fall under the umbrella of “intellectual property,” they are actually very different. As a practical matter, no one can dabble in patent law. Patent practitioners must sit for a separate bar exam in order to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. There is no separate bar exam for trademark lawyers, which means anyone with a law license can practice trademark law. However, just because you can do a thing doesn’t necessarily mean you should do a thing. Dabbling in trademark law is, objectively, a pretty terrible idea. Like any narrow practice area, trademark law is full of nuance and pitfalls that can easily ensnare a casual practitioner to the ultimate detriment of the client. Certification is extremely important in my practice area because it provides a mechanism for identifying attorneys who are well versed in a nuanced area of the law.

Q: How does specialization benefit the public? The profession in general?

Certification provides the consuming public an objective basis for distinguishing between truly proficient practitioners and dabblers. This is an invaluable service. Certification and the certification process literally raise the bar for advanced practitioners. Achieving and maintaining specialty certification will absolutely make you a better lawyer.

Q: As the current Board of Legal Specialization chair, how do you see the future of specialization/board certification?

The state of specialization in North Carolina is strong. As the practice of law becomes more and more focused, I predict that the importance of specialization across all practice areas will continue to grow. I am fortunate to have inherited an extremely solid and well-run program. My predecessors and the permanent staff at the Bar are dedicated professionals who have devoted countless hours in service to the public and for the betterment of the Bar. My new role as chair is to ensure the stability and longevity of the specialization program at large so that it can continue to render valuable service to the Bar and the consuming public. I hope to be a worthy steward. During my term, I intend to promote: 1) the uniformity of standards across the myriad specialties, 2) a widespread understanding of the proficiency standard the Bar has adopted for the granting of certification, and 3) greater participation in the certification program by diverse applicants. This last point is particularly important to me. The Board of Legal Specialization is tasked with serving the public at large. I firmly believe that we best serve the public at large when we look like the public at large.

Q: What would you say to encourage other lawyers to pursue certification?

I encourage lawyers to pursue certification all the time. My sales pitch has remained largely unchanged over the past decade: First and foremost, the process of becoming a board certified specialist will absolutely make you a better lawyer. By the time you qualify for, prepare for, and ultimately pass the certification exam, you will have improved your craft. This, in turn, means you can better serve your clients. Second, specialization sets you apart from other lawyers. Certification is an objective demonstration of subject matter proficiency in a specialized field of law—this is no small feat. Other members of the Bar and the consuming public will rely on this distinction when selecting counsel. Third, certification will bring you into a new professional circle populated with some of the best legal minds in our state, some of whom are truly masters in their fields.

Q: What do you enjoy most about the practice of trademark law?

This one is easy. I love the fact that trademark law very often affords me the opportunity to interact with clients when something good is happening in their lives. I am extremely lucky in this regard. As lawyers, we often only get to deal with people who are experiencing some type of immediate crisis. Don’t get me wrong—there are plenty of intellectual property battles to be fought, and they can very often become contentious, but it’s not all conflict all the time. As a trademark lawyer I also get to participate in the process of creating and protecting new brands, which can really be a lot of fun.

I also do a fair amount of brand enforcement work in Federal Court, which I really enjoy. These cases tend to go smoothly, especially once the defendants lawyer up and start getting some good advice. But that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes the defendants don’t lawyer up, sometimes they lawyer up and ignore the good advice they get, and sometimes they lawyer up and get terrible advice. The Trademark Act has some pretty robust enforcement mechanisms when things go sideways. On more than one occasion I’ve rolled up on a non-compliant infringer with the US Marshal Service in tow to conduct a seizure operation.

Q: How do you stay current in your field?

Attending specialty CLE programs is a tried-and-true method for staying current. In my field, there are one or two annual seminars that everyone attends. In our post-COVID world, there are also a plethora of high quality online and on-demand CLE services. These are both good ways to stay current in your field. That said, I submit that teaching at a specialty CLE is even better. It’s one thing to sit through a CLE, even one you are genuinely interested in, but it is quite another to teach it. If you know the subject matter well enough to stand up in front of a bunch of other know-it-all lawyers and tell them what’s what, you’ve probably got a good handle on it. Participating in CLE programs is also an excellent way to interact and connect with other members of the profession.

Q; What is something most people don’t know about you?

I am a life-long martial artist. I started training when I was in middle school and have been at it ever since. My level of mat time ebbs and flows as my work and familial obligations change, but it is always present in my life. When I was younger, I studied the traditional striking arts, which tend to focus on inflicting as much damage on the opponent as possible. As an adult, I’ve switched to Aikido, which loosely translates to “the way of peace.” Instead of striking to inflict as much damage as possible, Aikido uses joint locks and pain compliance to subdue an attacker without inflicting any permanent injury. So inflicting pain is ok, inflicting permanent injury is not. As one famous instructor used to say, “It is the way of peace, but not too much peace.”

Q: What would be your dream vacation?

We took it this summer. We spent two weeks roaming around France. It was fantastic! We went from Paris, to Normandy, Provence, and Cannes. I couldn’t have asked for a better family trip.

Q: What is the best advice you have ever received?

When I was a student, a lawyer once told me, “If you want to succeed in life, you need to do three things: 1) be honest, 2) be hard working, and 3) be easy to get along with. If you can do that, everything else with fall into place.” Turns out, that’s solid advice.

Q: What piece of art (book, music, movie, etc.) has most influenced the person you are today?

I was fortunate to grow up in a home where art—and the written word in particular—was valued and celebrated. Work is what we do for a living. Art is what makes life worth living. I have a charcuterie board of artistic influences. I am a devout Tolkien fan. My Complete Works of Shakespeare is tattered and dog-eared. I am moved by Van Gogh and Picasso. Seeing the Venus de Milo in real life gave me chills. I believe Eminem is a master poet. Tarantino’s storytelling and cinematography are uniquely compelling. Lin-Manuel Miranda, Steven Spielberg, Bob Dylan, Robin Williams—all artists without equal.

Q: What is your next goal?

Tomorrow, I hope I can be a little bit better than I was today.

For more information on the State Bar’s specialization programs, visit us on the web at nclawspecialists.gov.