Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[alizarin]

I have taken the time to search through the forums to make my little essay here as informative and realistic as possible. I would thus appreciate any constructive opinions.

I have a BS Chemistry from a top 10 UG with a focus on analytical organic chemistry. My numbers are 3.5/179 and I have one publication. I have native speaker German fluency and spent a year in Germany doing an academic research internship. Since then I have been working over a year essentially as an analytical tech RA/TA while looking for that elusive first chemistry industry job. After hundreds of applications to every corner of the US with many compliments on my resume, my only solid industry offer (where I was sent an employment contract) has been a chance to move next to the Mexican border doing QC graveyard shift work for less pay than a cashier at the local grocery store.

I am not in any job for the money, I can live fine on even 50K a year. I have zero debt now and I know law school will be a financial gamble. LSAT or not I know statistics don't lie, but law schools do. I also understand that, although I have a P-Chemistry foundation with stats / thermo / quantum and even a bit of materials, a BS Chemistry is not competitive in the patent field these days.

That being said I am looking for a change of career. I enjoyed the few law classes that I took in my college years. I see law as a profession that motivates me and that I can excel in, whereas a terminal Chemistry program might kill whatever youthful exuberance left in me. I guess my question boils down to should I consider going into patent law at all given the market trend? Should I just do some other form of law instead of being unemployed in three years time?

[WTF_Over]

I have taken the time to search through the forums to make my little essay here as informative and realistic as possible. I would thus appreciate any constructive opinions.

I have a BS Chemistry from a top 10 UG with a focus on analytical organic chemistry. My numbers are 3.5/179 and I have one publication. I have native speaker German fluency and spent a year in Germany doing an academic research internship. Since then I have been working over a year essentially as an analytical tech RA/TA while looking for that elusive first chemistry industry job. After hundreds of applications to every corner of the US with many compliments on my resume my only solid industry offer (where I was sent an employment contract) has been a chance to move next to the Mexican border doing QC graveyard shift work for even less pay than a cashier at the local grocery store.

I am not in any job for the money, I can live fine on even 50K a year. I have zero debt now and I know law school will be a financial gamble. LSAT or not I know statistics don't lie, but law schools do. I also understand that, even though I have a P-Chemistry foundation with stats / thermo / quantum and even a bit of materials, a BS Chemistry is not competitive in the patent field these days.

That being said I am looking for a change of career. I have enjoyed the few law classes that I took in my college years. I see law as a profession that motivates me and that I can excel in, whereas a terminal Chemistry program might kill whatever youthful exuberance left in me. I guess my question boils down to should I consider going into patent law at all given the market trend? Should I just do some other form of law instead of being unemployed in three years time?

Patent law is a dead end.

[paper_wizard]

As a new member, I'm cautioned not to post a hyperlink.  However, if you do a search on the words Franklin Roosevelt Oglethorpe University, you may find a speech dated May 22, 1932 in which FDR cautioned that too many attorneys were being graduated for the economy to provide enough jobs for all of them.  In a down economy, then as now, people who aren't finding work in their chosen undergraduate field may go to law school thinking that will be ticket to earning a living.  Not necessarily so.

As a physics graduate, reasonably fluent in reading German, once I passed the patent agent exam and applied to law firms, I got several rejection letters.  However, my ray of hope is that a small tech firm has retained me to do some of their patent work.  I file about one application a year and some of them have finally made it all the way through to being issued, though with help from attorneys.  It's not enough to quit my software development day job (yet another certification hurdle) though it is something that I look forward to as a next career, as software employers seem to favor those under age 55.

From the theory "chance favors the prepared mind", there's nothing wrong with passing the patent agent exam and seeing if you get blind calls from people who find you on the roster (though it seems the number of blind calls I get varies with the state of the economy).  On the other hand, the patent office is hiring and maybe that could be your ticket.

[patentatt]

With an LSAT score of 179 - one point short of perfection - you should be able to get a very attractive offer, if not a free ride, to a top 14 law school.

Since you will not be taking on debt, there is little downside, I think.

Other points:

1. try to get into a part time program
2. try to work part time - get a sense for whether you actually like patent law
3. with a chemistry background, you will want another degree, like a masters - see if you can do a dual track (I wouldn't suffer through a Ph.d unless you want to be a professor - attorneys with both Ph.ds and JDs strike me as misguided overachieving masochists wandering through academia and life).

[Dazed-n-confused]

With an LSAT score of 179 - one point short of perfection - you should be able to get a very attractive offer, if not a free ride, to a top 14 law school.

Since you will not be taking on debt, there is little downside, I think.

Other points:

1. try to get into a part time program
2. try to work part time - get a sense for whether you actually like patent law
3. with a chemistry background, you will want another degree, like a masters - see if you can do a dual track (I wouldn't suffer through a Ph.d unless you want to be a professor - attorneys with both Ph.ds and JDs strike me as misguided overachieving masochists wandering through academia and life).

Point 3 was funny.

I'm definitely a fan of working through school both for spending change (assuming s/he does get the nice scholarship) and experience. 

And particularly with the chem focus being analytic, I agree that an MS (focusing on something other than analytic) would be helpful.  I just don't see much call for analytics in the patent world, and I've mostly done chemical patents.  I tend to see corps preferring to simply defensively publish analytic techniques, although this *might* be different if I'd ever worked for an instrument manufacturer.  Anyway, a focus on organic small molecule etc. in an MS might be more valuable.  Or polymer chemistry if the OP can shift gears that far.

But... on the other hand as to patenatt's points 1 and 2, I've gotten the (possibly wrong) idea mainly from reading here and other blawgs that much of the top 20 is relatively unfriendly to the idea of working, and tend to treat their part time programs as ugly red headed stepchildren??

[InMuenchen]

given your stats, you should have options.  in particular, if you are open to working in europe, then i doubt you will have trouble finding a job.

[klaviernista]

That being said I am looking for a change of career. I enjoyed the few law classes that I took in my college years. I see law as a profession that motivates me and that I can excel in, whereas a terminal Chemistry program might kill whatever youthful exuberance left in me. I guess my question boils down to should I consider going into patent law at all given the market trend? Should I just do some other form of law instead of being unemployed in three years time?

First things first, some questions:

1.  Do you know what patent attorneys do on a day to day basis?
2.  If the answer to 1 is yes, do you still want to be a patent attorney?

If your answer to 1 or 2 is no, don't invest in becoming a patent attorney until you can answer both questions with a yes.  Otherwise you could be making a huge mistake.  Its a bit like investing in a company without knowing anything about it.  Except that instead of simply losing money, you can lose a lot of time and waste a lot of effort becoming something you don't like, or which offers little in the way of employment opportunities.

On another note,  I used to say that I was evidence that it WAS possoble to get a patent attorney job with "only" a BS in chemistry*.  I myself have a BS in chem, and over the past 10 years or so my career has been pretty successful.  I started as a patent examiner, moved to a large firm (worked their full time when going to law school), then went in-house, and now I am at a small firm (prior employer went under and there aren't too many patent lawyers in my state).  HOWEVER, the market is not what it once was.  Finding ANY kind of employment in the patent field with no experience is VERY difficult, even for new attorneys that (arguably) have a much stronger technical background.  Thus, where I used to say that it was absolutely possible to find a job with a BS in chem, the anecdotal evidence now has me saying that it is still "possible" but very, very difficult.  You may (and likely will) have to scrape and claw for your first job, and you might have to take another (arguably less desirable) route into IP law post law school (e.g., starting at the USPTO instead of a law firm). 

That said, I wish you the best of luck in whatever you decide.  But knowing what I do about being a patent attorney, I have to reinforce that you should be able to answer questions 1 and 2 above with an unqualified yes before you invest in law school.  There are far easier ways to make money. And with relatively few job opportunities and lots of competition, you should really be sure that patent law is something you want to do.

all the best,

Klav

*  Don't you hate it when IP folks characterize a BS in chemistry as "just" a BS.   I don't know about you, but the BS program at my alma mater was far from easy.  Its not as though I was going to keggers every night and stumbling into class.  To the contrary, I was cranking on p-chem and instrumental analysis problems until the wee hours of the night.


**  If you want to talk about law school, working as an IP attorney, etc., send me a PM through the forum and we can set up a time to chat.

[befuddled]

I can count the number of patent attorneys I know with 3.5/179 on no hands.

While I'd be loathe to say that even a Ph.D is overkill for generating IP, 3.5/179 native ability is overkill for a prosecution job. In other words, you are underqualified on the chem. side, and overqualified on the humanities/analytic side vs. the run of the mill patent attorney.

As folks note, you can go top 14 easily (add the foreign experience/language and I'd say top 5 is possible).

So, one clear option is to roll the dice, leave chemistry in the 'been there done that' bin and commit to making a legal career. You can do some IP in law school to keep your hand in, and you could end up working in IP or patents, but don't confine yourself to it. You don't have to, and shouldn't. Wall street, big corporate, etc., all are open to you.

If you want to max out your potential, you needn't, and shouldn't, go in a part time program. There is far too much long-term networking going on during the day. Personal experience missing that to my detriment (Georgetown night).

However, I'd say spending a lot of time in Munich (summers, exchange) is a good idea.

[alizarin]

I really appreciate the insight and advice here. I am a little more encouraged now to work on my law school personal statement...

@paper_wizard
Taking the MPEP is on my agenda for the coming year. As for the USPTO, like with everything else, my BS Chemistry and limited experience puts me at a distinct disadvantage. I still applied, but the lack of response makes me feel that I have a better chance of being POTUS.

@patentatt
On the one hand a part time program can help me avoid debt, but on the other hand I am not sure I can physically handle four years of work (or another program) and law school. I imagine given the time constraints, such a path would also preclude me from all the nice but time consuming law “soft opportunities” and “hard prizes” which may prove pivotal toward that first law job / summer internship.

Along the same vein of what use is a degree if you can’t get anything out of it, I have not seriously considered graduate school. My BS was focused on organic synthesis and spectroscopy. From the other end of that tunnel I hear outside of academia job prospects in the field are hard to come by. There is always that Mexican job...

I will definitely try to find a patent job to get a real feel for it. I think that might be critical no matter what happens.

@InMuenchen
Working in Germany would be a dream. I know from experience though, in the industrial science field at least, that there is little flexibility with accepting foreign credentials that do not match perfectly with demands. (And once again it’s a case of a BS being worthless and matching the MS to the field.) I heard there are options for those with American patent experience and German ability. I assume from your handle you are in Munich doing exactly that? Frankly it’s what I am banking on, but it brings me back to square one with getting US patent experience in the first place. Is whatever summer experience in law school plus the patent bar enough? Or is USPTO mandatory?

@klaviernista
Yes to both. I have a fair idea of the patent life from a patent attorney I know (he rarely has any time to talk) and what I have been able to glean from various sites. I spend a lot of time idle now in academia doing next to nothing and that drives me crazy. Bring on the reams of documents!

I appreciate the realistic outlook, which unfortunately I did not get from Disneyland my college professors and career office. Little did I know a BS Chemistry would prove to be so "worthless" in this market.

Yes, I specifically took all the advanced physical, inorganic, and analytical chemistry courses offered, but in the end I feel there is little “outside” differentiation from one BS to another such as in biochemistry where you only need a semester of organic. It’s part of a bigger problem.

Thanks for the offer, I will be sure to do it when I have more time after my applications.

@befuddled
That’s exactly my concern. Sifting through the threads here I see that comparatively my science credentials are weak. Investing another 5 years minimum just to equalize before law school feels like a death wish. My biggest reservation with patent law is that I will be in a hole with debt and once again with no job prospect because of my under-qualified science background.

I had a part time job in college. Maybe it would have been smarter to rack up debt and join a fraternity instead. I know what you mean, you have to be almost superhuman to get the best out of a part time program. I hate to end up with a jack of all trades master of none degree. Oh wait...

[patentatt]

BTW I may be totally wrong about the part-time program.  I am used to reflexively recommending that to ordinary applicants that might otherwise take on a lot of debt.

Because of your LSAT score, you are not a typical applicant, and you will probably be able to get a ~free ride to a top law school, and can enjoy full time education.

If you don't take law school very seriously (and I didn't take it seriously), you can have a lot of fun: drinking, partying, flirting, playing chess during class, etc.  Top law schools are hard to flunk out of (and it only gets harder, the higher you go up U.S. News).  It's finding a good job that you enjoy after graduation that is the hard part - and I think the U.S. economy is only going to get worse in the next 1-3 years.

Nevertheless, as Klav said, you want to know whether you will actually like patent law before you throw you go to law school.  That is the other thing that I reflexively tell most people who consider going to law school.  Because you can probably get a ~free ride, though, there is less risk and cost to you if you don't like patent law, or being a lawyer.  But it is still three years of your life and lost salary.  Because law school is fun if you don't take it seriously, and will give you time to consider and make these life decisions, and because you are reasonably likely to enjoy some kind of law practice (with a little effort), I think the downside is pretty small.

Still, the above posters are probably right that 1. a part-time program is not necessary and 2. you should determine whether you will actually like being an attorney before jumping into the fire.

P.S. I also agree that a B.S. in chemistry shouldn't be disparaged.  In my experience, the specifics of your technical background contribute very little to one's performance as a patent attorney.  I think the mystique behind some technical backgrounds, relative to others, is bull****.  Nevertheless, it is a reality in the marketplace.  I am just letting you know what to expect in your job hunt.  Although exceptions exist, many firms have a policy of generally not hiring chemical people without post-college education.

[NJ Patent1]

All of law is a dead end.  Patent, tax, securities, real estate.  Dead, dead, dead end.  PI and criminal may be exceptions.  Check Above the Law website for relevant commentary.  But law is - or can be - a living.  Plumbing can be too.  Whoever started this thread wants to avoid (undefined) "death" in the practice of law?  Several easy steps:  1. graduate in top 10 at Harvard, Michigan, Yale, other top-tier.  2. be law review editor at said top-tier law scchool. 3. clerk for SCOTUS. 4. work for Am Law 100 firm (better AM 10). 5. get appointed a DC judge. 5. write awesome opinions and law review articles as said DC judge 6. get nominated and confirmed to SCOTUS and serve as long as you want or until you die.  A 6 step not a laborious 12 step programme!  Can't do this simple 6-step programme?  Then tuck your ego in your pocket, lock it, get up, shower, get dressed, have a cup of joe and go to work like most of us here.  Not to worry, you will "die" in due course.  Everybody does.  Wanna be rich?  Start a hedge fund.  Don't like the scenario?  Then be a plumber - you will get as much - no more - respect from your customers (aka clients). Plumbers save the cocktail party by fixing the toilet b4 guests arive and get hugged (and paid).  Patent attorneys just take your money for trying to acquire something you (client) have some perceived right to bcs you had some brain fart that will make millions.  Don't try to explain sections 112, 102, and 103 to them.  The customer will just walk away and find someone else.  Sigh, this is life for me as patent attorney.  I doubt I am all alone.   

[WTF_Over]

I think you can start job hunting in Jan. 2012.

Nonsense.

[Modest_Moniker]

I don't understand all this negativity. If you have a 179, why would you even be asking such a question? I find it hard to believe, but if your question is in earnest, then I'd definitely say that there is a career waiting for you if you really want it. Nobody can guarantee you success, of course, but a 179 indicates that you're one to work for what you want. You want it? GO FRICKIN GET IT, and don't worry about the losers that want to pee on your aspirations because they don't have the grit, talent, luck.. whatever.

This forum would have said that I would have had better luck as a waiter, yet here I am practicing patent law as an agent with nothing more than an undergrad. I got into a mid-sized firm. I got my position THIS YEAR. In a down market. I went after it- You should too, if you really want to.

Go get it.

[IPLoya]

I don't understand all this negativity.

Simple, people who barely made it onto the boat want to pull the ladder up. 

I understand it, but I am also one who heard alot of negativity and either out of determination or stubborness or "foolishness" refused to accept the negative.  That being said, the patent attorney job market seems to be about 10x harder than the engineering job market in the late 90s, where jobs were being handed out like candy and it didn't seem unusual at the time.

A 179 LSAT and good UG is definitely an advantage.  There is a sort of irony though, that those with top grades who get top pay at top firms also tend to work TOP HOURS with TOP PRESSURE.  And there is little or no exception to that rule.  So your academics may be a one-way ticket to a fairly stringent work/life-style.  This is pretty well understood by those already in law, but may not be so obvious to prospective entrants.