What Makes Patent Attorneys Different and How to Hire Them
[00:00:00] For patent prosecution positions, how could I find out where the position played a strong technical background to interviews and other due diligence. Most of the firms will say they always do whenever asked, but they also appear to say they recruit for the best law school grades.
Okay. So there's an article on BCG called why most law firms have no idea how to hire, patent attorneys or something along those lines.
So the patent attorneys are a little bit different. Most patent attorneys will and I don't want to get too much into it, but most of them don't do that well in law school because they're working as engineers making as much as lawyers in many cases while they're going to law school or they don't have to have technical backgrounds.
And aren't necessarily, is interested in the case method and all that kind of stuff. Some of them do very well. I think one of the top students in my law school class was an engineer that came, a patent attorney, but most of them don't. So the law school grades, typically the path of a patent attorney.
A lot of them go to school at night. But if they do go to law school most do not get the greatest grades. That's great. And that, and this is just a these are just some, it's fun stuff to know [00:01:00] about, but most of you not, get the best grades most do not.
Get into the best law firms because they're scientists, may ' technical, it's not personality ended up getting the best law firms when they graduate into the best law firms immediately. And then and then typically what happens because they don't have the best grades and may go to because they're practicing law schools because working when they go to school as engineers, maybe go to school and then engineers or scientists during school.
And then and then what happens is they start at small firms. Small firms and then they and then they typically will move after when they get one to two years of experience. We'll move to major experience, we'll move to large firms. So that's the pattern that typically happens with patent attorneys.
They may ask for good grades and so forth if you're very young as a new attorney and you may be in your forties when you go to law school. But I just mean, like a junior. And that's typically what happens with a patent prosecution attorney. They will often start in smaller firms and then [00:02:00] after that, we'll move into larger firms.
And they all value technical background but most of the positions in patent law firms are moving to smaller firms. There's not I don't have a ton to say about that. The reasons why, but the main, reason is that large law firms will typically have higher billing rates.
And that's kinda how it happens.
