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[SeriousTyro]

Hi,
I'm at a fork in my career path. I'm becoming a senior in electrical engineering at University of California, San Diego with a 3.75 GPA. My mother's friend gave me advice regarding my career path and now I'm stuck at a fork. Originally, I was going to get a Masters in EE, probably at UCSD and then work for a company. My mother's friend advised me to go into intellectual property saying how if I weren't a genius in my field, I won't get far. I can definitely say that I am not a genius.
Going into intellectual property seems like a good career path but I have some concerns and preconceived notions about law school that are conflicting with whether I should pursue a patent career or stay on the electrical engineering path.

• First of all, English is not my forte. I take a great deal of time writing essays and they are not good either. My mom's friend mentioned you can think patent writing as "lab reports." I'm fine if it is like this but is it true to some extent? What concerns me is during law school, I'll be writing actual essays and I feel that I won't be able to compete with people from English/History majors.
• A concern for most people, is the cost. Currently, most of my tuition is paid by financial aid but would financial aid still pay for law school? As I've researched, law school can roughly cost $30k-40k/year. This is about twice my current tuition without financial aid. My mother's friend said patent lawyers can make $100k~$200k a year, an amount that seems unreal  . While staring salary for entry level position would be roughly $60~70k for a "normal" electrical engineer.
• With prestige comes cost. Do schools in the top 50 differ all that much? I live in CA so I would like to attend, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis, or UC (Hastings). UCI opened a law school and UCSD might open a law school so if I were to go to UCLA instead of UCI law school, is the difference in prestige worth the cost? 
• I also have this preconceived notion that the people who get lawyer positions are mostly Caucasian and it is harder for other ethnicities to get in. My mom's friend's son-in-law is Caucasian which reinforces my notion. But then again this is probably due to language as Caucasians are generally better at English. I'm probably thinking too much about this .   
• Applying for law school. I'll be working with my professor's graduate students on a project this summer and hopefully during senior year. I'll be getting good research experience but I should also acquire industry experience. I was wondering if I should spend a year or two at a company, maybe while getting a Masters in EE, and then apply for law school after getting work experience or start studying for the LSAT asap and apply for law school during fall quarter of my senior year? Since I'm 21, I would be able to do the former path unless getting into law school as young as possible is preferable?

Any thoughts of me becoming a patent lawyer will be helpful. Any comments, thoughts, or rambles about LSAT, law school, or life in general would be nice to read.
Thank you in advance for spending the time to respond.
~William

[bleedingpen]

The job market is tough right now for new grads (hard to forecast several years out).  Still EEs are the most in demand. 

I seem to have read about a law school based in San Diego that wasn't getting any of their graduates placed.  Go to the best school that you can, unless a comparable school is substantially cheaper. 

Very few of us had good writin' skills when we entered law school.  If you are smart enough to get an EE, you will figure the writin' thing out. 
 
As far as salary- you hit the low end of the range for EE patent attorney grads that get a job.  And trust me there are plenty of attorneys, particularly EEs, that are doing much better than 200k/yr. 

I don't know enough to discuss your issue about race, so I won't comment. 

[SoCalProductDev]

The following advice is only worth what you paid for it, so keep that in mind.

If I were you, I would do everything I could to get a job as an electrical engineer doing actual electrical engineering *design* work.  Try and get at least a good two to three years of design experience.  If you have to work as an intern to get the job, then do it.

Meanwhile, go out and buy a patent bar review course.  You can get a good course for about $550 bucks used which includes hours of audio, some lectures on DVD, some books, and an explanation of how to pass the exam.  Watch and listen to the lectures, do some practice exams, and familiarize yourself with what is involved.  Then, when you have some serious time and motivation to really dedicate yourself to passing the examination, start from the beginning and do some intensive study with a focus on prior exams.  Go take the test, and become a patent agent.  Whether you go into intellectual property work or not, you will always have the registration as a patent agent in your back pocket.  A month of studying and a day taking an exam isn't much to ask for to have an additional marketable skill.

After you get some *design* experience as an electrical engineer, then you can either continue that path or go after the (sometimes) higher pay involved with management, marketing, or sales on the technical side of electronics.

 With some experience and money in your pocket, you can take a good look at going for that MSEE degree (knowing, of course, that you are also a registered patent agent if you ever need it).  Or, if you still have a passion and interest in law, then go into law school.  Right now the way the market is, the opportunity cost of law school doesn't look like it is a great payoff unless you go into it because you believe you will love the work and business of law. 

You are 21.  Done with your BSEE by 22.  Few years work experience by 25 as a design engineer.  Opportunities from that point forward will look a lot different.  Your path will be more clear.  Maybe you end up changing your mind and want to go into management, marketing, more advanced electrical engineering, or maybe even intellectual property law. 

One thing is for damn sure... be sure to continuously do something to improve your skills every year.  I personally spent many years as an electrical engineer and I became very very skilled at my job, but at that particular job.  What I didn't do is spend time outside of work mastering other marketable engineering skills.  Learn from the mistakes of others... it is cheaper that way.

If the politicians that we get in the future are anything like the politicians that we have had over the last decade or so, then you are going to need every little advantage you can get.

[SoCalProductDev]

A month of studying and a day taking an exam isn't much to ask for to have an additional marketable skill.

Correction: Passing doesn't really give you a marketable skill.  It's more like a license without the skill.  But still, valuable nonetheless. 

[plex]

Hi,
I'm at a fork in my career path. I'm becoming a senior in electrical engineering at University of California, San Diego with a 3.75 GPA. My mother's friend gave me advice regarding my career path and now I'm stuck at a fork. Originally, I was going to get a Masters in EE, probably at UCSD and then work for a company. My mother's friend advised me to go into intellectual property saying how if I weren't a genius in my field, I won't get far. I can definitely say that I am not a genius.
Going into intellectual property seems like a good career path but I have some concerns and preconceived notions about law school that are conflicting with whether I should pursue a patent career or stay on the electrical engineering path.

• First of all, English is not my forte. I take a great deal of time writing essays and they are not good either. My mom's friend mentioned you can think patent writing as "lab reports." I'm fine if it is like this but is it true to some extent? What concerns me is during law school, I'll be writing actual essays and I feel that I won't be able to compete with people from English/History majors.
• A concern for most people, is the cost. Currently, most of my tuition is paid by financial aid but would financial aid still pay for law school? As I've researched, law school can roughly cost $30k-40k/year. This is about twice my current tuition without financial aid. My mother's friend said patent lawyers can make $100k~$200k a year, an amount that seems unreal  . While staring salary for entry level position would be roughly $60~70k for a "normal" electrical engineer.
• With prestige comes cost. Do schools in the top 50 differ all that much? I live in CA so I would like to attend, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis, or UC (Hastings). UCI opened a law school and UCSD might open a law school so if I were to go to UCLA instead of UCI law school, is the difference in prestige worth the cost? 
• I also have this preconceived notion that the people who get lawyer positions are mostly Caucasian and it is harder for other ethnicities to get in. My mom's friend's son-in-law is Caucasian which reinforces my notion. But then again this is probably due to language as Caucasians are generally better at English. I'm probably thinking too much about this .   
• Applying for law school. I'll be working with my professor's graduate students on a project this summer and hopefully during senior year. I'll be getting good research experience but I should also acquire industry experience. I was wondering if I should spend a year or two at a company, maybe while getting a Masters in EE, and then apply for law school after getting work experience or start studying for the LSAT asap and apply for law school during fall quarter of my senior year? Since I'm 21, I would be able to do the former path unless getting into law school as young as possible is preferable?

Any thoughts of me becoming a patent lawyer will be helpful. Any comments, thoughts, or rambles about LSAT, law school, or life in general would be nice to read.
Thank you in advance for spending the time to respond.
~William

Bullet point responses:
1) That isn't good that you aren't good at writing, but it is very common among most engineers.  Law involves tons of writing, especially in comparison to engineering school.  It is quite possible with your high intelligence, you will rise to the challenge, and will figure out the process quickly once the pressure is on, it is much more important to write down the right things, rather than to just write fast.

2) Law school is more than that, at least for the total cost, the average tuition cost is $35k/year, and with cost of living+books, it goes up to $50k/year.  Not to mention the inability to work as often as it is possible to do in some engineering schools while attending a normal amount of classes.  $100k/year may sound great, but you need to take into consideration the fact you will have dumped $150k, and 3-4 full blown working years (another $150-200K), just to reach that 40k/year bump in pay (assuming you get it, since law has a much weaker job market than engineering).  Under the most optimistic scenario at that pay, it would take almost 10 years to break even on your law degree, after which you would rake in more money, assuming all goes well.  Oh, by the way, you will be working 30-50% more every year for that increase in pay.  So, $100k/year ends up not sounding so great, it preferably needs to be higher to make the law degree worth it for the increased workload and lost earnings.

3) Anything past the top 20 or so is regional.  That means you should just go to the cheapest accredited place possible outside the top 20, preferably in one of the states that have a lot of EE patent work, such as around DC/Cal/NY/Tex (by order of market size).  The prestige between 26-150 is negligible, just don't go to a school so bad that it is infamous.

4) Not really, actually, as a racial group, Asians have the largest advantage, there are just a lot less of them as a whole in the US.

5) Maybe, just whatever you do, don't rush the LSAT, you need a good score.  Also, coming into a better job market than right now would help, but that is purely a matter of luck.

[Ghoti]

Just some additional thoughts...

Initially I saw your post and thought that you had a long list of negatives without any opposing passion or interest in law/patent law... but a longer look made me realise that your doubts are fairly typical of someone in your position.

I would agree that writing as a patent attorney is more like writing lab reports than literature essays. There is a distinct structure and rules to follow. An important thing to consider though is that a lot of the job is reading and writing, if this doesn't interest you then it may not be a good fit.

[SeriousTyro]

Thanks for all the responses.
I'll will definitely get some technical experience first and from there see if I still want to go to patent law.

[khazzah]

An important thing to consider though is that a lot of the job is reading and writing, if this doesn't interest you then it may not be a good fit.

Absolutely! This is something I stress to all who are interested in patent pros. Can't stress it enough.
 

I would agree that writing as a patent attorney is more like writing lab reports than literature essays. There is a distinct structure and rules to follow.

Yeah, more like lab reports than essays.  But not *much* like lab reports.

Drafting patent apps is *more* like "technical writing", by which I mean describing how things work. But it's quite different than technical writing, since conveying how something works is only *one* of the many purposes of a patent application. Believe it or not, some might say how-it-works is a secondary purpose of a patent app.

Drafting responses to Office Actions isn't as technical.  There is usually a "technical nugget" which you need to convey -- the technical distinction between the cited prior art and the claimed invention. But conveying the technical nugget isn't enough, as there are other things to be concerned with in a response. Thus, drafting responses is mostly legal writing, with a smidgeon of technical stuff thrown in.

[Crusher]

I've practiced patent law for a couple of years.  Your grades are excellent, which obviously indicates you are a hard worker.  But, other aspects of your post suggests you need to work on written, and perhaps oral, communications. 

IMO, you should aggressively pursue life/work experience that will help you break out of your shell, formulate your own opinions, and stop relying on unverified information (like the advice your friend's mother appears to be giving).  I.e., get a J-O-B. 

Specific other replies to you: 

1.  Don't take your friend's mother's advice unless she is a patent attorney or has similar personal experience. 

2.  A lot of IP attorneys don't speak English as their first language.  But, their cultural connections (especially Asia and India) often help them get clients.  Persuasive writing is quite a bit different than writing lab reports.  Look in the mirror and see if you want to spend the several thousand hours (classes, work, constant feedback, etc.) it will take over the next few years to become a more effective communicator. 

3.  Cost is something also that makes sense on an individual basis.  Will someone (i.e., your parents) be paying or will you take loans?  Sit and calculate the amounts and see if it make sense.  (I entered law school in 2003 and tuition  has already doubled or so since I graduated).  In my opinion, prestige is a sliding scale that really depends on location.  Even the top schools (with a couple exceptions) have more recruiting pull in their regions. 

4.  Perceptions about Caucasians are just perceptions, and perhaps your own insecurities.  Research/Google "Am Law 100 firms," and see who the EE patent prosecution associates are.  I haven't done it, but I bet you'll get a mix with the top firms being perhaps even more diverse. 

This board provides a wonderful service, but see if you can connect to local patent practioners in San Diego (maybe through USSD's alumni mentoring program) and run these questions by a real person. 

Drop a line if you disagree with anything or have any questions!





I also have this preconceived notion that the people who get lawyer positions are mostly Caucasian and it is harder for other ethnicities to get in. My mom's friend's son-in-law is Caucasian which reinforces my notion. But then again this is probably due to language as Caucasians are generally better at English. I'm probably thinking too much about this .   
Applying for law school. I'll be working with my professor's graduate students on a project this summer and hopefully during senior year. I'll be getting good research experience but I should also acquire industry experience. I was wondering if I should spend a year or two at a company, maybe while getting a Masters in EE, and then apply for law school after getting work experience or start studying for the LSAT asap and apply for law school during fall quarter of my senior year? Since I'm 21, I would be able to do the former path unless getting into law school as young as possible is preferable?

Any thoughts of me becoming a patent lawyer will be helpful. Any comments, thoughts, or rambles about LSAT, law school, or life in general would be nice to read.
Thank you in advance for spending the time to respond.
~William