Ask HN: Who has changed careers from engineer to patent agent/lawyer?

yeah all my friends who are patent lawyers would be horrified if anyone thought that they had previously been engineers

What are your thoughts about the "two tier system" others are mentioning? I haven't heard of that before, but it seems like doing prosecution is not desirable? Some law firms offer to pay for your law school, so it doesn't seem bad doing prosecution while you attend law school, but I have no idea. The opportunity I was proposed is in patent prosecution, but it seems people transition into something else quite frequently.

My dad told me a story once about being paid for expert witnessing for patent expertise.

The short version was that some company's legal team was looking to hire him for expert witnessing. They knew who he was, and had a rough idea of his opinion already, and knew that he was more or less opposed to their position. So he asked them why they'd be willing to pay $?!?/hr for him to read stuff and tell them that he thought they were wrong.

They basically told him "if paying you $?!?!? allows us some insight into the opposition's potential strategy that lets us file a motion that just delays a ruling from morning until after noon recess, that will recoup all the costs we pay you". And apparently they weren't even exaggerating because in half a day they pulled over an order of magnitude more than $?!?!? in sales.

Evidently this sort of paying experts who disagree with you to help form your case strategy is just a normal thing, and it makes sense to me, I just couldn't fathom the numbers at the time. The amount of money specifically in drug patent cases is staggering. There is a long, long list of drugs that pull in over a billion dollars a year in sales.

The US's total (legal) drug market is like half a trillion dollars.

When was in the pharma field I worked with a patent agent who had an M.D. and a PhD. She was outstanding -- really made a huge difference to the quality of our patents. She worked for one of the major law firms.

However I can confirm what others have written: she was at the bottom of the hierarchy. They treated her as if she were a paralegal.

This wasn't about her specifically -- we had a bunch of partners and associates working on our thicket of IP over the years: men and women from all sorts of national and social backgrounds. Despite her extensive education they considered her skills as simply mechanical.

PS: they charged as much for her time as a junior associate. I doubt she got paid as much though.

If by two-tier, you refer to the prosecution (i.e. drafting) vs. litigation (i.e. lawsuit) tiers, there is a clear separation in the industry. I do prosecution exclusively, and can't answer if it is inherently desirable (inasmuch as any career path is desirable), but I don't find litigation appealing. On the litigation side of the world, you might find a faster-paced, higher-stressed, higher-compensated environment which has more significant deadlines and "stakes" especially when involved in court proceedings. However, I would also imagine that a more flexible career path is tied to such work since litigation can translate broadly to other lawyerly endeavors vs. the more specialized prosecution.

But, to stress again, the work is inherently different on prosecution vs. litigation. Prosecution also has its work deadlines, but these can be managed more flexibly in practice. Prosecution is a joy for someone like me who prefers to largely work independently (once you learn your craft sufficiently), attempt a good work-life balance, learn new tech every day, apply that knowledge to writing about it in a very specialized manner, compartmentalize tasks (each patent can have its own mental silo), and still do some limited "lawyerly" work dealing with examiners at patent office to attempt to get patents allowed in light of the prior art. Plus, depending on the firm and your ambition, you can branch into anything - litigation, licensing, contracts, etc.

I should note that you don't need to pass the patent bar exam to do litigation, but you would eventually need that for prosecution (agent, attorney). So some say that it can be harder to switch from litigation to prosecution because of that barrier.