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[N/A]

I am a first year law student interested in patent law (i have a sufficient technical background.)

How much time, or percentage of time, is spent learning about the new technology?  I find this kind of work very interesting, so hopefully it is a "significant" amount of time.

I assume patent prosecutors are the ones that really deal with learning the new technology.

Thanks in advance.

[JimIvey]

I'd estimate about 10-25% of the time of writing a patent application is learning the technology.  Almost none of that is research in the sense of background reading.  It's almost all reviewing and studying the disclosure documents -- which I suppose is a form of research.

But this isn't the whole picture.  The whole time I'm drafting the application, my understanding of the invention gets deeper.  So you could count part of that time too.  Other things I do (respond to rejections and such) involves very little technical study.

The percentage of time varies according to the complexity of the technology and the degree of familiarity I already have with it.  

It was very different when I first started.  I was working a little out of my area of technical expertice and spent much more time studying the technology.

I hope that's helpful.

Regards.