The Intellectual Property Forum

Until now everything I could see was always properly respectful, so I wonder what made him go off the deep end?

He stopped taking his medication?  Seriously, I've once had an examiner enter the Examiner's amendment that had nothing to do with the draft claims I gave him.  In other words, the Examiner's amendment reflected his own version of the claims, not the one we agreed upon.  When I called him and politely asked: "WTF?", he promptly blamed the cold/cough medication he's been taking all week.  I mean, I totally understand that sipping "purple drank" can help to deal with being an examiner, but still ... 

With respect to everyone's complains about the Examiners - well, I was there for some time and it's a mixed bag, just like with the attorneys.  As discussed here before, the PTO employs both a number of very bright folks and also many not-so-smart folks who don't speak/write English very well.  In general, the more ambitious/smarter Examiners leave to go to law school and switch to the private side, but some remain because the job is pretty cushy.  Many eventually become SPEs or work in re-examining art units.

1.  EE are assumed to be able to do CS work.  No partner has given me a good reason for this.  I have looked at the EE curriculum for various schools and CS courses don't appear to be a core part of their curriculum.  Maybe I'm wrong on this.  Meanwhile, MEs actually do have to take CS courses and do CS work in upper level courses.

In my school, EE and CS were a part of the same department and shared a number of intro classes together, including some core CS/computer architecture classes. In the industry, most EEs working the real EE jobs also end up doing some sort of coding (embedded, signal processing, communications, simulations, etc.)  Just can't get away from it.  Maybe it's not "true" high-level software development, but still.  But I am confused why MEs "have to" take CS classes?   Seems to me that there would be a lot more fundamentals in common between CS and EE majors than between CS and ME.   

They seem to want associates to have an EE or CS degree, but they have clients who don't care what major the person who does there work has, as long as it's good quality.

Quality is subjective.  You need to understand the technology.  Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's complex. You can have a very-well written OA response that cites tons of case law and uses plenty of legalese, yet makes the wrong technical argument that might be later exploited by the potential infringer in litigation.

I used to examine a fairly complex EE technology  (my art unit had one of the highest time/per disposal in the PTO) back when the Internet was still made from the tubes.  I remember getting a response back that made no sense whatsoever.  Was very well-written, formatted, cited caselaw, etc.  But did not make any sense technically speaking.  So I looked up the attorney in this big firm and guess what, she had a fancy law degree from T14 and a B.S. in Biology.  Figures....

"I would be looking at starting at 160K..."

Looking at it is about all you'll be doing.  You won't be earning it.

"...(at least according to the employment stats I have seen)."

and

"Columbia has the best employment stats of any law school in the country other than Stanford."

Having read many articles recently on the plummeting number of law school applicants (it's at a 30 year low), the one thing I've taken away from the articles I've read is that pretty much everybody agrees that the "employment stats" that law schools report, and that includes all law schools, even the super fancy ones like Stanford and Columbia, are mostly made up bullsh!t.

now, now, with an MS in computer science and a JD from Columbia, the OP is very likely to get interviews from lots of big firms during OCI (also assuming he does at least avg in 1L).  That said, OP - for your own sake, I hope that you have normal social skills.  Case in point - I have a good friend who went to a comparable law school with similar credentials to yours, also did quite well in classes, but who's also a somewhat awkward individual/poor interviewer (he's a great guy, just doesn't make the best first impression). So he got tons of interviews during OCI but then ended up bombing all of them and had a fairly difficult time finding employment outside of OCI.  He did OK in the end, but the moral of the story is this: a fancy degree just opens doors for you, nothing else.  You are not guaranteed a 160K job from Columbia, but you will have more opportunities to get one than folks from lower ranked schools.  Still, you must be able to take advantage of those opportunities in the end.

maybe he meant that there is "only one" set?

I doubt your boss meant what he said.  He probably meant "crush" rather than "drown." I mean, it's pretty hard to drown someone with paper files - air will undoubtedly get through some cracks. 

First year associate litigation work (e.g. sitting in a conference room reading 50+ boxes of printed out e-mails, etc.)...

That's how I know you are an old-timer   No one does hard copy doc review these days - it's all done electronically with tools like Relativity, Catalyst, etc..