CadeMarq Law PLLC

CadeMarq Law PLLC is a Denver-based law firm serving: 1) companies and artists nationwide with their trademark and copyright needs, 2) businesses with their business needs, and 3) people who need everything in between. It is one of the first firms of its kind: a firm for artists, created and run by an artist; a firm for minority-led business owners, created and led by a minority-owned business owner; a firm created by the common person to serve the common person and level the imbalance and inequities of minority diversity in the legal field--ultimately providing representation to the historically underrepresented and underserved. 

We help businesses protect their brands and trademarks. We help artists protect their creations and works. We help people--in whatever capacity available to us, whether it's a referral to another attorney, general resources on understanding complex legal processes, or direct legal assistance provided by an attorney who is responsive, affordable, easy to understand, relatable, and representative of the common person.

With CadeMarq Law PLLC, we seek to fill what we see as a large gap in minority business/artist/individual legal access: advice that is uniquely tuned and provided by a fellow artist, minority business owner, and individual member of the community they serve.

These groups lack critical access to a legal system that not only disproportionately affects them on the criminal justice side but also has left them behind in providing immeasurably valuable legal resources that can close the wealth gap in these communities and help reverse the systematic inequalities plaguing them.

We see the gap in legal access for these groups as yet another example of how minority artists, minority individuals, minority communities, minority-owned small businesses, and the common person remain underrepresented and underserved with respect to reciprocal, representative attorneys, and seek to help undo the damage caused by the historical wealth gap affecting these communities.

According to the American Bar Association’s 2020 Profile of the Legal Profession, the percentage of lawyers who are men and women of color – Hispanic, African American, Asian, Native American and mixed race – has grown slowly over the past decade.

Collectively, the number of lawyers of color grew less than 3 percentage points in the past 10 years, from 11.4% of all lawyers in 2010 to 14.1% of all lawyers in 2020, according to the ABA National Lawyer Population Survey. However, white men and women are still overrepresented in the legal profession compared with their presence in the overall U.S. population. In fact, they represent over 86% of all lawyers compared to 60% US population representation.

Alarmingly, according to a study completed in 2022, only 4.5% of all lawyers are African American; this percentage is down from ten years ago (4.7%). The AIPLA 2017 Report of the Economic Survey, which focused exclusively on law firm demographics, showed that 1.8% of IP attorneys are African American. By comparison, the U.S. population is 13.4% African American.

Roughly speaking, there are about 1.3 million total lawyers in the US. This means that only about 58,500 are black attorneys and only about 23,400 are black intellectual property lawyers.

The numbers are even worse for Colorado. In 2020, the Denver Post reported that only 2% of all public lawyers and judges were Black, despite 40% of defendants being people of color.

This makes the black ownership of law firms a rare sight.

This makes the black ownership of IP firms an anomaly.

This is why CadeMarq Law PLLC exists.