3.85/167 Petro Eng Forum

[Swaner]

3.85/167
BS Petroleum Engineer from UT
4 years WE in industry
Interested in Patent law

Please chance me for T13 + UT or T14 (including UT)
(I don't know what to call it any more)

[lawschoolbound11]

I think Georgetown has proudly accepted the title of the #14 school.

[Patriot1208]

Decent to good chances at cornell on down. You'll probably need an ED to get into any school higher ranked than cornell. But, NU, UVA, Mich, and Duke are all possbilities with ED, just not good ones.

[paulinaporizkova]

enjoy Northwestern

[gwuorbust]

enjoy Northwestern

[japes]

I'm essentially your stat twin (3.83/167) and got into UT in-state. You won't get money at UT with those numbers (LSAT scholarship floor at 168) unless you're URM, though.

[JamMasterJ]

Michigan and 11-14*

[bhan87]

I think you have an okay shot at Berkeley if you write your PS well. Lower T14 should bite.

If you're really set on going into patent law you should try to get a few more points on the LSAT and shoot for Cal

[neonx]

If you have amazing softs, shoot for the stars. If you don't -- Try Berkeley, Cornell, Northwestern, UT, and UCLA. ED options abound.

[ahduth]

Sounds like a retake candidate.

But with those numbers Northwestern and maaaaybe Berkeley.

Otherwise retake. The vast majority of the schools will ding you with bad numbers without even looking at the rest of your application.

[NoJob]

3.85/167
BS Petroleum Engineer from UT
4 years WE in industry
Interested in Patent law

Please chance me for T13 + UT or T14 (including UT)
(I don't know what to call it any more)

Patent is saturated. Stick with black gold.

[Swaner]

Patent is saturated. Stick with black gold.

While that might be true in the short term the reason I'm considering a career change is what I fear could happen in the long term. Unlike many in my industry I'm not convinced that fossil fuels will continue to be the worlds most important energy source, in fact I won't be surprise to see the transition to something else during my career. Patent law would be a field in which i could use my current experience starting out (developing oilfield technologies) while gaining new experience to use down the road, possibly to help foster in the new energy technologies that would replace fossil fuels.

While black gold is doing great now, and providing a comfortable life, I worry about how quickly things could change and leave me in a dying industry with no other experience.

Retaking would be a no brainier as 167 was in the low end of my PT range (166-172). The problem is I really would have little to no time to prepare due to a new position at work.

[paulinaporizkova]

Michigan and 11-14*

the purpose of the asterisk is defeated if you do not include a corresponding footnote

[NoJob]

Patent is saturated. Stick with black gold.

While that might be true in the short term the reason I'm considering a career change is what I fear could happen in the long term. Unlike many in my industry I'm not convinced that fossil fuels will continue to be the worlds most important energy source, in fact I won't be surprise to see the transition to something else during my career. Patent law would be a field in which i could use my current experience starting out (developing oilfield technologies) while gaining new experience to use down the road, possibly to help foster in the new energy technologies that would replace fossil fuels.

While black gold is doing great now, and providing a comfortable life, I worry about how quickly things could change and leave me in a dying industry with no other experience.

Retaking would be a no brainier as 167 was in the low end of my PT range (166-172). The problem is I really would have little to no time to prepare due to a new position at work.

Patent isn't going to get any better by the time you would graduate. There are many people with science degrees who went to law school to do it. I fear that your credentials may get wasted if you can't find the right type of entry level work to develop your patent abilities. There is the risk that you may not have the grades to get a decent entry level position.

My class of 300 had a lot of hard science bachelors (the minimum needed for the patent exam). A number of people had even better degrees like PhDs. A number of these people went into patent law. They do not all have jobs in that field today. Even worse, some were laid off during the recession. You can bet that they will be competing with you for patent law openings.

I don't know petro, but is there any way of moving from black gold to anything else in the energy sector? Like ethanol or methanol?

As a final note, you really shouldn't go to law school if it is your fall back to what you feel is a dying field. You would just be moving to another contracting field. Biglaw is a mess these days; their clients are more reluctant to finance associate work. Midlaw is almost non existent for entry level work (some boutique work for patent though), and shitlaw is called shitlaw for a reason. My friend who left family law to go to nursing school was miserable as a lawyer. She represented divorcing asswipes who wanted to go to trial over who gets the family dog instead of being reasonable. This is where her career went after being laid off from biglaw too.

Despite my handle, I have been an employed attorney for a number of years in a niche field at a boutique, and I would take your job over mine. A lot of the people posting here are 0Ls who have no clue how to draft a Verified Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief or know what satisfies the "in custody" requirement for a habeas corpus petition. Or how boring the work is once you have learned your area and how much attorneys cut and paste previous filings. Your allegations concerning the 1331 jurisdictional requirements change little when all you do is state over and over and over again that there is a federal issue to your suit.

Ask other attorneys about your proposed career switch. They will caution you against it as I, a real lawyer, have.

Read the NYT article. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html

And then go read some of the blogs cited therein and talk to REAL lawyers as in not 0ls. The entry level market is not that great, and I think it would be a huge risk for you given the cost of attendance especially when considering the huge opportunity cost of your job.

[alexonfyre]

To jump in on the derail, based on my American research habits (read nothing, opinion on everything), it seems like a lot of young people are jumping ship from petrol nowadays (I know a couple of guys in it and neither of them were planning on it out of UG.) If this is the case, then the labor market is shrinking and the industry is still very strong. Even if it goes into decline, the hardest hit will be new recruits, not vets like yourself. If you are truly worried, then I am sure your skill set would transfer over to LNG or some other form of energy, or at worst you could do a graduate program in an alternate energy and shift over when the time comes. That said, patent law and tax law =/= the rest of the legal industry, if you are an engineer with a JD from anywhere in the top 50, at median you can score BigLaw (I know two guys who went to Syracuse that worked at a V100 from median, both were Civil Engineers in my UG.) I don't know where "Patent is saturated" comes from, but when I was in hard sciences I was told many times that keeping a 3.25+ in law school would get me OCIs without a problem at any T1. Unless this is a VERY recent development, I would say that statement was specious and the world is your oyster right now OP.