Reply to Is there really a need for patent lawyers and is it possible to transition to it as a non trad?

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Reply to "Is there really a need for patent lawyers and is it possible to transition to it as a non trad?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s highly unlikely you will find anyone willing to pay you to go to law school.  If you have the background to be admitted to the patent bar, you can do that and become a patent agent without going to law school.  From a law firm’s perspective, it’s more cost effective to hire you as a patent agent (at a lower salary than a patent attorney), and then have you feed the technical knowledge to the attorney who’s going to do the actual legal work (and who paid for their own law degree).[/quote]

But why would firms cheapskate for top tech talent then? Wouldn't that just keep driving the so called shortage?  You can try to cheapskate and talent will just go to industry for $150-200k+.  Why would and electrical/computer engineer work for a cheap lawfirm if Google would pay $200-300k?[/quote]

Top firms paying biglaw market salaries aren't having too much of a problem attracting enough patent attorneys out of law school (without paying for their legal education).  The firms having trouble are the smaller boutique firms who can't keep up with the biglaw (or Google) pay scale.

If OP has a sufficiently strong connection with a firm that they would want to recruit him, that's the one avenue that might make this work for him.  But otherwise, it's too big a risk for a firm to do what OP wants.  If he gets admitted to the patent bar and goes to work for a firm as a patent agent for a few years and shows himself the have tremendous promise as an attorney, then maybe the would agree to pay for him to go to a night program.  But we're talking maybe three years at the firm before they'd consider it, for years for a part-time night program, that makes it seven years before OP could even start practicing law, at which point OP would start climbing the ladder to partnership.  So even if OP started this whole process today, we're talking at least 15 years before OP has a prospect of making partner, which means probably more like 18 years before OP has a shot at making truly big money.[/quote]

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