Law school or USPTO?

[Anonymous]

I graduated last year from a top 20 Eng school. Have a job with a small company in the DC area. I recently got a job with the USPTO. Pay will be lower. I also recently took the LSAT and did reasonably well. I can easily do much better on the LSAT with some prep and get into a top tier Law school.

A family friend in his early thirties is a Patent Examiner (supervisor), is a GS-15 and makes the max salary for that level. He also got the PTO to pay for his law degree and is an attorney as well. He strongly recommends that I take the PTO job, get the government to pay for my law degree, work for a few years at the PTO until I get about 10 years or so of experience and then move to private law. He thinks I can avoid the long hours that fresh law school grads have to put in and I can go into a law firm at a senior level. Admittedly he doesn't know anyone who has done that but has heard of a couple of people who have done that.

I can go either way. Law school payments are not an issue. My parents will pay.

What should I do? Go the easy route (PTO, free law school, etc) or take the LSAT again, get into a good law school and fo into private law (I understand that I may not get into a Top school or get a high paying job but at this point I need to set a course)?

[Anonymous]

Plan A.

[Anonymous]

If your parents will pay swing for the fences. The other route sounds painfully boring.

[Anonymous]

Go the easy route. No question.

[Anonymous]

Take the PTO job for a couple of years. Figure out if you like it. If you do, get PTO to pay for your school. Firms will fall over themselves for you. A neighbor did this and she basically wrote her own ticket onto the fast-track for partner at an IP law firm.

If it turns out you don't like patent work, then you have your essay for law school and you have something on your resume that will help you stand out for OCI.

[Anonymous]

I was a trademark attorney at the PTO for a while and I always heard that the patent examiners worked really hard.

You should go to the best law school you can get into, especially if your parents are paying. Can you do better than Georgetown? If you can go to Harvard or Yale or Stanford but go to Gtown so you can work at the PTO, that's not a good idea. (I'm a gtown grad btw.)

I don't know enough about the IP world to guide you otherwise. Try to talk to partners at IP firms, if that is what you want to do. Look up profiles by googling law firms, then contact ones who went to your undergrad and ask if you can talk to them and get their advice.

[Anonymous]

OH - also - have you told the PTO your current jobs pays more? Negotiate. They may be able to offer you a higher grade, but een if not, they should be able to get you the highest step within the grade they have offered you if you show them your paycheck. Some people in my trademark class knew to negotiate and others did not so people in the same class were getting paid like 15 thousand apart.

[Anonymous]

Another vote for PTO. I did a variation of your Plan B 15 years ago (school to firm to government) and from what I seem the opportunities are much less now than what I had.

[Anonymous]

DO NOT STAY AT THE PTO LONGER THEN 2 YEARS.

[Anonymous]

The successful patent lawyers I know all have PHDs. I vote work for a year or two and then go to law school.

[Anonymous]

None of the successful patent attorneys I know have PhDs. They have technical degrees. But not PhDs.

[Anonymous]

He strongly recommends that I take the PTO job, get the government to pay for my law degree, work for a few years at the PTO until I get about 10 years or so of experience and then move to private law. He thinks I can avoid the long hours that fresh law school grads have to put in and I can go into a law firm at a senior level. Admittedly he doesn't know anyone who has done that but has heard of a couple of people who have done that.

I wouldn’t take advice from this guy—he’s a PTO lifer. Staying at the PTO for 10 years will not write you a ticket into a job at a good firm—it’s not like you’re going to be coming in with clients after being in a government job for a decade. Patent prosecution at big firms is still going to mean long hours and cutting your time because clients don’t want to pay—it’s difficult to get your hours. Some PTO experience is good but being there too long can taint you.

What Kim of engineer are you? That makes a difference.

[Anonymous]

Something's slightly funny here. A stepped out 15 that's early 30's. I'm not a fed, but my wife got her 15 mid-30's, and is still not stepped out, and she's one of the youngest 15's I know...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

He strongly recommends that I take the PTO job, get the government to pay for my law degree, work for a few years at the PTO until I get about 10 years or so of experience and then move to private law. He thinks I can avoid the long hours that fresh law school grads have to put in and I can go into a law firm at a senior level. Admittedly he doesn't know anyone who has done that but has heard of a couple of people who have done that.

I wouldn’t take advice from this guy—he’s a PTO lifer. Staying at the PTO for 10 years will not write you a ticket into a job at a good firm—it’s not like you’re going to be coming in with clients after being in a government job for a decade. Patent prosecution at big firms is still going to mean long hours and cutting your time because clients don’t want to pay—it’s difficult to get your hours. Some PTO experience is good but being there too long can taint you.

What Kim of engineer are you? That makes a difference.

I agree with this. Examining and prosecution are different animals, and frankly, it is hard AF to get a big prosecution docket of your own and similarly hard AF to manage it profitably enough to actually get compensated (as you explain above). I would consider a hybrid approach of going to the PTO and examining for a little while and doing some networking with some patent agents that are working at firms that pay for law school. Finnegan used to call them student associates or whatever. Then, consider doing that to avoid the debt (have the parents invest the money instead). In this arrangement, which is not as common as it used to be for some reason, OP will get some amount of associate year credit when you convert over to a full time associate.

All that said, the golden age of patent law is long past us at this point, unless something dramatic happens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Something's slightly funny here. A stepped out 15 that's early 30's. I'm not a fed, but my wife got her 15 mid-30's, and is still not stepped out, and she's one of the youngest 15's I know...

The PTO is one of the only agencies to run a budget surplus. For an interesting read, go read about fee diversion....

That said, I do question if by early 30s you would be stepped out even if you were a supervisor at that point? Administrative Patent Judges regularly make more than the DC area GS-15 scale top step.