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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]Non lawyer here with some patent law friends. What is the difference?[/quote]

Mostly supply and demand.  To do patent law, you need to have a technical degree, and those in the highest demand are engineering degrees.  In some areas, you need to have a masters or PhD in addition to the JD, and not that many people are interested in investing nearly a decade of time into higher education.  There are just not that many people with engineering degrees who are interested in going into law--especially given that there are other employment options without taking on so much debt.  There are also a lot of scientists and engineers who suck at writing, which is problematic if you are a lawyer. Most people who go to law school have humanities or social science majors, and they don't have the background to do intellectual property law for tech, biotech, pharma, etc.

On top of that STEM degrees tend to have less grade inflation, especially engineering, so there are not nearly as many people who have the grades to get into top law schools.  People also tend to go to law school a little older than traditional law students, because they have pursued higher education or worked in industry for a while and decided to do a career change.  This means more people go to part time law school than other areas of law, or go to lower tier law schools with scholarships because when you are older sometimes you are not in a position to take on as much debt.  For the most part, the top law schools don't have part time programs.

All of this means that employers can't be as choosy as with other areas of law since there is just a smaller pool of qualified people.  More people get employed in high paying jobs coming from worse ranked law schools or having worse law school grades, especially if they have education and experience that is relevant to clients.  There are also a lot of firms that specialize in only intellectual property that pay just as well as Big Law firms.  DC is a hub for intellectual because of the patent and trademark office and there are a lot of firms that specialize in intellectual property based out of the DC area, so there are a lot of opportunities to work in a legal job if you go to school part time, and Georgetown, GW, AU, and George Mason all have night programs.[/quote]

I'm  computer science graduate (bachelor's degree) and was an English minor, so a lot of people suggested patent law. It honestly wasn't worth the time investment. It seemed like the options were high paying/long hours, or Government. Since I already am in Government and don't want to work long hours, I would have had to pay out of pocket. My scientific job wouldn't pay for law school. So, I would have to work full-time for many years and invest a lot if money to make the same money I would make anyway. So, yeah, it's not an attractive option. [/quote]

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