1.From my background, do you think I am a good fit for this profession?
Possibly... your credentials certainly will get a ton of firms looking at you.
2. If I go to Law School, I am deciding between evening and full time programs. In So. Cal, it looks like LMU and U of San Diego are the only "known" schools that offer such a program. However, from what I understand, those are not "top" Law Schools. Would this hurt my chances of advancing into Patent Law?
Don't do part time unless you have to. (I'm saying that as an evening student) Part time law school isn't like taking MBA courses at night. It's much more time intensive. Mentally and emotionally, part time school plus a full time "real" job is really taxing. You can PM me if you want more details, but I would do everything I could to avoid evening school if I were you. Also, if your LSAT is even remotely reasonable, you're going to be competing for a lot of money at some of the top schools in the country, so going to a lower tier school just for the evening program may not make sense.
3. How is Law School like compare to Engineering School?
It is extremely subjective and stylistic. It is not technically hard. Most people know the answer to the question asked, but it's about being able to write the best and most stylistically pretty argument in a time-pressure situation. It's not time-pressure situation like some of the engineering courses where nobody gets close to done, but I have had an exam or two that was impossible to finish in the time allotted.
4. How is the workload for evening programs like the one I described above?
Instead of taking 6 or 7 classes, you're taking 4 or 5. You spend all day at work, commute to school, take classes from 6pm to 9pm (give or take), go home, collapse into bed, wake up the next morning feeling awful and having slept through your alarm, and start it all over again. The weekends consist of taking care of any work related stuff that got neglected during the week, spending 4-12 hours preparing for the next week's classes, and trying to relax as much as possible so that you don't burn out. Sometimes you skip the prep for the next week's classes just so that you can have a day where school isn't top of mind, but that just makes the next week suck worse.
If you plan on doing the evening program, plan on finding a part-time job. Evening program + full-time job (with responsibilities) is not worth the stress.
My most important advice in this entire comment is to start cutting back on expenses now. You need to get yourself and your family as financially streamlined as possible before law school so that you can decide what path is best for you without your expenses holding you hostage.
5. What is life like from day-to-day for a Patent Attorney?
Depends... there are a lot of roles that you can fill. On a 10,000ft view, there are patent prosecution attorneys (spend their day writing patent applications and defending those applications' patentability in front of the USPTO), patent litigation attorneys (spend their day helping do pre-trial work for patent trials), patent licensing attorneys (spend their day drafting licensing grants and negotiating deals between companies), and patent PTAB attorneys (spend their day preparing for and arguing administrative patent trials/appeals/reviews in front of the USPTO's Patent Trial and Appeal Board).
Most patent attorneys do more than one of those roles.
6. I read some started as a Patent Agent or an IP Engineer and work their way to being an Attorney. Would some company offer tuition assistance for Law School?
Some do... I'd recommend against doing a tuition assistance program. Leave your options open when you graduate. If it's your dream company or firm offering you the tuition assistance, take it. Otherwise, don't.
Take the Patent Bar ASAP, maybe even before the LSAT. You can spend a few hundred bucks to enroll in a study program, and having your USPTO reg number before law school opens you up to working as a patent agent during law school and gives you a leg up on people like me who have been putting it off.
7. How is the job market for Patent Attorneys in Southern California?
Not nearly as good as the Bay Area. I'm not particularly attuned to the IP market in SoCal, but I do know that the Bay Area is probably the #2 biggest IP market behind DC.
There are a few patent focused people on this board, and they're all receptive to any questions you may have. Feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions about my experience.
I love technical work but I don't want to pigeon hole myself into a specialty like my senior colleagues. I love to have a variety of technical knowledge. I also worried about my job security after Moore's Law hit a wall in the near future. Furthermore, there aren't a lot of semiconductor jobs in Southern California.
I was the same way. I loved having a broad understanding of technology rather than being forced to be the SME on some small corner of some small protocol. Patent law is a much more surface level broad understanding field.
Job security isn't that great in law when compared to the tech field. Patent law is a bit different from law in general, but it's still a quite volatile industry compared to tech. This is especially true in biglaw, where the "up or out" mentality pervades.
both at UCLA. I have 3.5 years of experience in electromagnetic in aerospace systems and 3 years of experience in hardware design. I love technical work but I don't want to pigeon hole myself into a specialty like my senior colleagues. I love to have a variety of technical knowledge. I also worried about my job security after Moore's Law hit a wall in the near future. Furthermore, there aren't a lot of semiconductor jobs in Southern California. I have filed for nine patents during my time at this company. I really enjoyed my time working with Patent Attorneys In-House and externally who represented my inventions. I gained a lot of satisfaction explaining my knowledge to them. I think I have pretty good reading, communication, and writing skills for an engineer (Comparing myself to other engineers I have worked with, but definitely not humanities major level). The idea of going into Patent Law just clicked a few weeks ago and it has been on my mind since then. Right now, I am studying for the LSAT to see if I have a chance of getting into a good law school.
