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Which one would be better for my career?

I have and undergraduate degree in biotechnology and I worked for 6 years in labs in the biotech industry between undergrad and law school. My ideal job right after law school would be as a patent attorney at the USPTO or working at the FDA. Long term I would like to be more involved in the business side of things such as regulatory compliance, transactional work, or mergers and acquisitions.

I would plan to a take MBA/MS classes at night and on the weekends after law school. Would the return on investment of either or both of these degrees would be worth the time/money investment?

No additional degrees will advance your career as an attorney once your have a JD, with the possible exception of a tax LLM from a handful of schools.

If you want to achieve your goals, you're probably better off spending those nights and weekends you planned to spend in a classroom doing your day job.

Agreed, given your BioTech background, you can do all of those jobs (M&A, Patent Attorney, Regulatory Compliance, transactional work) without the MBA or MS.

Honestly, the greater difficulty is deciding what you want to do. You probably can't be an M&A/Patent/Regulatory attorney. You probably need to pick something. Granted, you'll probably touch on some of the other areas, but there is a fair amount of specialization in all three areas.

a patent attorney at the USPTO

What exactly do you mean by this? The only "attorney" positions at the USPTO are at the solicitor's office, but the number of positions is very few I've never seen them hire graduates right out of law school.

Anonymous User wrote:

a patent attorney at the USPTO

What exactly do you mean by this? The only "attorney" positions at the USPTO are at the solicitor's office, but the number of positions is very few I've never seen them hire graduates right out of law school.

Sorry, I meant a patent examiner.

Going to take a masters in Biotech to go into patent prosecution, IMO. I had no luck with my science BS in the patent prosecution market. Those saying he'll be fine with the BS should realize that the prosecution side of things really wants masters and above. Bio and chem folk need the PhDs. A biotech grad with experience would be fine with a masters. Much more difficult with the BS.

The above post is correct. I should add that the requirements for being an examiner is even more strict, and I would think that a PhD is required or almost required now to become an examiner for most biotech fields.

For FDA law, you don't need a masters, but getting one might help.

As for MBA, I don't think it's relevant to any of the career routes you've listed.

Black-Blue wrote:The above post is correct. I should add that the requirements for being an examiner is even more strict, and I would think that a PhD is required or almost required now to become an examiner for most biotech fields.

For FDA law, you don't need a masters, but getting one might help.

As for MBA, I don't think it's relevant to any of the career routes you've listed.

Agree with the tech requirement for patent examiner. Re FDA: They probably care more about compliance/regulatory than patent/technical experience, so getting a master won't help you much.

With some exceptions, I expect those in the bio/chem arena to struggle at landing work in the private sector unless they have a PhD, a decent legal education (factors include law school and law GPA), and some other positive factors (w/e, fit, reg #, networking skills, etc.).

And no one in the bio/chem arena should expect to land an examiner gig these days—especially without a PhD. Sorry.

+1 to that KidStuddi comment.