Question on IP and patent law Forum

[mendelssohn]

Hi, I'm just a college undergrad planning on applying to law school. I am just recently getting familiar with the legal profession, after reading a lot on these boards and the TLS profiles on different firms.

For me, as of right now, I think I would try to get into a firm after law school, but I also have an interest in emerging technologies and consumer electronics.

Here's my question: can you work in this field at all without being a patent attorney? I could not sit for the patent bar as I am a political science major. I was hoping to read somewhere that you can still be in this field, working on intellectual property with companies and start-ups, even with my non-technical major.

(I'm sorry if this is a really basic or often-repeated question!)

Thanks!

[auds1008]

Hi, I'm just a college undergrad planning on applying to law school. I am just recently getting familiar with the legal profession, after reading a lot on these boards and the TLS profiles on different firms.

For me, as of right now, I think I would try to get into a firm after law school, but I also have an interest in emerging technologies and consumer electronics.

Here's my question: can you work in this field at all without being a patent attorney? I could not sit for the patent bar as I am a political science major. I was hoping to read somewhere that you can still be in this field, working on intellectual property with companies and start-ups, even with my non-technical major.

(I'm sorry if this is a really basic or often-repeated question!)

Thanks!

No it is not possible, at least not with your non-technical degree. You could work as a paralegal but I'm not sure how beneficial that is to your end goal. The same, I assume, applies to the soft IP area, copyright and trademark. So either you get a technical degree and work as a patent agent or just go to law school and work as an attorney.

[bk1]

The Legal Employment forum is for current law students. This question has been moved to the appropriate forum.