[BecomingMachine]

So, as an Engineer, I've been reading a lot lately that there's good oppurtunities in Intellectual Property Law. My skills are very strong in critical reading/writing, and I've always wondered how suited I would be for this oppurtunity. So with that, I have a few questions for IP Lawyers or Anyone who got into law school.

• Are engineering degrees prestigious/desireable on a law school application?
• If I have attained a M.S.E., will law schools consider my Undergraduate or Graduate GPA?
• What law schools are the best VALUE in IP law?
  

Thank you for your consideration. Also, general law school thread.

[lurker]

1. Yes, as long as your undergrad GPA isn't abysmal
2. Undergraduate
3. Whichever costs you the least

The real value in an engineering degree is eligibility for the patent bar.

[Menace]

Where? EU or US?

[Sherman]

I see that you are in Germany. My comments only apply to America.

There are a lot of engineers who go to law school, so it’s not going to stand out as something special. The two most important considerations for getting into law school are the LSAT and your grades. Most law schools teach a general education. During the first two years everyone takes the same subjects, and during the third year you can take special subjects that interest you. There are law schools that offer more courses in Intellectual Property than others so check out their course offerings. It doesn’t give you any special advantage to go to a law school that specializes in Intellectual Property. In law, the best thing you can do to get a job is to get high grades in the best school you can get into.

Also, in Europe, you typically become a patent agent without going to law school. It’s different from the US where many lawyers also take a separate patent exam and then become patent lawyers. So, in Europe, the patent agent is its own career path. It requires a series of difficult exams to qualify, and you are able to prosecute patents that are valid for all the member countries of the European Union.

European qualifying examination
http://www.epo.org/learning-events/eqe.html

[BecomingMachine]

I'm moving back to the US soon.
What do you define as abysmal? My gpa is about a 3.0... Some would call that abysmal.

[Menace]

What kind of engineer? 3.0 GPA is kind of low. You would need really good LSAT's. Law school admission is almost purely grade-based & LSAT based.

Why do you want to go to law school? Why not just work at the patent office? It is a mistake to pick law schools based on any alleged "specialty." There are no value law schools worth going to. Go to the best law school you can get into if that's what you want to do. Unless you're EE I can't recommend it.

[not_dead_yet]

1. Meh. You'll get in somewhere. Demand for law school seats outside the T20 has crashed, given that most graduates outside that belt can't find jobs to pay off their six-figure debts.

2. Your graduate degree is irrelevant, now and forever.

3. You are asking the wrong question. Law schools don't exist to teach you about the law. They exist to credential you, and there are plenty of TTT schools that charge more than Harvard/Yale/etc. for tuition. What you should be considering is the tradeoff between what you're paying and the prestige of the credential. I.e., do you want to pay $150k out-of-pocket for a Harvard degree, or $90k for a UVa degree. (I'm making these #s up -- too lazy to check them.) Part of that turns on what job market you're entering -- I'd rather go to G'town than Columbia if I'm planning to work in DC.

[Anaguma]

Law is pretty fucked right now for new grads, including IP. Even if you went to law school now, it will be very hard to find a job afterwards.

If you really want to know what it's like to be a patent lawyer and want to have the best chances to get a job after law school, work for the patent office first as an Examiner. Your work as an attorney will be similar, and the USPTO hires seasonally. If you don't find the examination work to be enjoyable, then you will be miserable as a patent attorney.

If you still want to be a patent attorney after working as an examiner, then go to law school at night once you are able to hotel as an Examiner (typically 18 months after joining). Once you graduate from law school roughly 4 years later, you will have 4+ years of examiner experience, you can waive the patent bar, and pretty much any law firm worth its salt in IP matters will take you regardless of GPA or prestige of law school. You will also be miles ahead of any other new grad.

It's really brutal out there now, so nowadays you need that kind of advantage to get your foot in the door. It's really hard to get an entry job now even if you come from a top law school with good grades, let alone the lower tier schools.

[Hencredible Casanova]

(07-29-2013 01:58 PM)not_dead_yet Wrote:  

I.e., do you want to pay $150k out-of-pocket for a Harvard degree.

I used to date a girl who went to HLS. They have an income-contingent loan repayment assistance program for their graduates so long as you work in a law-related field - whether public or private - they make your monthly loan payments for you. Most people qualify.

I know Santa Clara University has a well-known IP Law program but otherwise it's not a top ranked school and you would likely find that most of your opportunities, if any, would be in Silicon Valley.

[Menace]

Law school tuition is basically the same regardless of where you go. Shit hole law charges $40K/year, and so does HLS. I guess if you can get in-state tuition at a good state school, that's the best you can hope for. Forget about IP-specific programs, you will not learn shit about practicing patent law by taking patent law. Trust me on this. Just get into the best ranked school possible. Or better yet, don't do it at all. I cannot emphasize enough how bad the market is and that the big law firm model is under severe strain. Best IP markets are NYC, DC, and SF in terms of most firms, etc.

Some firms offer, or used to offer, student associate positions. Sometimes also called a tech specialist. You work at the firm during the day and then go to law school at night. Note, that there are very few decent part time law schools in the country; the highest ranked ones are in DC.

[WestIndianArchie]

As a working lawyer with a Chem E background, you have to reverse engineer the process.

What industry do you want to be advising?

Who are the law firms that do their legal work?

Figure that out, and then find those law firm websites.

At the law firm website, start looking at the Partners and the schools that they went to.

You're going to have to cross reference those Partner Schools and those School OCI's (On Campus Interviewing).

Once you have the schools where the partners went and still interview at, you can then focus your efforts on getting into those particular schools.

Once you've figured out your 10 or so schools that will get you into the industry you want you have to make yourself attractive to those schools.

Engineering degrees aren't so uncommon that you're an automatic shoo in, but most everyone in your class will be from a Liberal Arts/Social Science and possibly business background. Law Schools like to diversify everything.

Most schools have a matrix, that combines GPA and LSAT Score + and will bump you into the mix if you have an interesting background.

My class had a brain surgeon, a former professional baseball player, an elected official, and a 19 year old whiz kid chick + the typical smattering of ethnic/racial/gender/orientations. Although I think there wasn't much representation from the non-Suburban middle class. Most everyone went through college and then entered lawschool. Few people with real life experience, hell real job experience.

Your GPA for undergrad and grad school will be considered, and in many cases the undergrad score is more important.

Where you went to school is also important as well. Marginal NYU guy will beat a superlative State School guy if we're talking an Ivy League law school.

Again, where you went to school and your old gpa are not things you can change? (or can you?)

What does matter is the LSAT.

Do not cheap your way out of it and think you can study on your own, go in and score near perfect.

Take a Princeton Review class (1200 when I took it in the 90's) and Practice, Practice, Practice. You want to be scoring in the 175-180 range (out of a total 180).

3 components of the test
- logic games/word puzzles - easier for engineers than others, but not easy per se.

- reading comprehension - not so easy for engineers.

- analogy - randomly hard because it depends on how big your vocabulary is

That's the strategy to get you into law school.

The next strategy is a 2 semester strategy for being in the top 25% of our class @ top school.

You're going to take classes about law school and law school test prep BEFORE you set foot in law school. LEEWS comes to mind. Google it.

Your ability to easily get into the firm of your choice depends on you getting primarily A's with a few B's during your 1st year - when you know very little about legal thinking. The following 2 years basically do not count.

There are some notoriously tricky parts about actual laws, lots of counter-intuitive cases (contracts will blow your mind) - but for the most part you need to understand the underlying logic of law school exams, not so much law itself.

Law School exams in the vast majority of law schools happen 1 time, at the end of the semester. And your grade on that exam determines how you do in the class. You have only 1 shot to beat 80-90% of your competition. And you have to repeat that feat at least 8-10 times your 1st year of law school. Just one shot. There's no homework, no group work, no tests after 6 weeks, no pop quizzes. Just one high stakes test at the end of the semester, where you're facing people just as hungry as you are.

After you kill it grade wise, then you're up for interviews, and you'd better hope that one of the firms that you want to work for, that works in the industry you care about, picks your resume up and wants to interview you for a summer internship.

If that happens and you get that summer internship, you're good for at least 6 years before you get pushed out when you don't make partner.

I can honestly tell you that being an engineer with an MBA or with another language under your belt is a better move than going to law school to be patent lawyer.

All the patent lawyers I know
1) have jobs (which is good)
2) hate their jobs (which is bad)

WIA

(07-29-2013 09:32 AM)BecomingMachine Wrote:  

So, as an Engineer, I've been reading a lot lately that there's good oppurtunities in Intellectual Property Law. My skills are very strong in critical reading/writing, and I've always wondered how suited I would be for this oppurtunity. So with that, I have a few questions for IP Lawyers or Anyone who got into law school.

• Are engineering degrees prestigious/desireable on a law school application?
• If I have attained a M.S.E., will law schools consider my Undergraduate or Graduate GPA?
• What law schools are the best VALUE in IP law?
  

Thank you for your consideration. Also, general law school thread.

[Ensam]

I highly recommend you read some patents before jumping into IP law. They are boring as shit. I read 3-5/week as part of my job and I want to shoot myself every time that part of my day comes around. I can't imagine having that be my entire job.

[_DC_]

The legal market is awful right now. IP law used to pay extremely well because no lawyers had engineering degrees. Well over the last decade or so, lots more eng. went to law school. There is also a surplus of lawyers in general.

The USPTO is very difficult to get a job also right now, but they are hiring again. A large number of people applying to the USPTO are lawyers who can't find a job or disgruntled attys who are sick of working so much or struckout at partner.

From a work/life balance perspective, the USPTO is 100x better. I have friends in both. My one IP atty friend hasnt had a weekend off in several months, and he's making the same money ~130k as primaries at the USPTO, who can work from home for 40 hrs a week or less.

Do yourself a huge favor and do as much research as possible. Check out intelproplaw.com for comparisons of examiner vs. atty. Also check out glassdoor.com for salaries and honest reviews of work/life and job satisfaction.

I could only see a patent atty being a good choice if you are an extremely driven hard worker, are willing to work 60-70 hours a week, and willing to bear the giant risk/reward odds. There is a good chance you won't be an equity partner, especially in a biglaw firm. So you can work your life away, and miss partner track after7 years. You might be getting paid slightly more than a primary examiner, but working twice asmuch. So the only upside is the small chance you hit it big and make 500k a year. Examiners max out at 155k, but working from home and flexible hours. Plenty of time to make money in other endeavors.