For what it’s worth, I have a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering (concentration in metallurgy), and I work as a patent lawyer now. If you really think you might be interested in law, you might look into Technical Specialist jobs in law firms that do patent work. It’s a good way to get law school partially or fully paid for, and to use your engineering degree in a different way.
I would say that the characteristics of a promising candidate for patent law are
[ul]
[li]You like to teach[/li][li]You are interested in all sorts of science and engineering - you read Scientific American cover to cover because every article is interesting[/li][li]You are good at working to deadlines[/li][li]You are good at juggling multiple projects at once[/li][li]You have a large vocabulary, and are good at writing precisely[/li][/ul]
What I meant was that part of me thinks that I’d like to be a Lawyer because it is prestigious, I can live in the city, and it can be lucrative (usually, after awhile). But I should also say that I’m not exactly sure what type of person is suitable to be a Lawyer. I enjoy organization, doing research and presenting facts and information clearly, but I understand that not everyone litigates and I will most likely go down a different path such as corporate or… what else is there?
I’d like to add that I work well when given a task alone. I used to think I was good at working in teams but at this point I believe I’m better alone.
Yes, Civil and Geological Engineering has many of the same courses, so those would probably take 2 years. Electrical, Chemical, Computer have a few of the same courses in 2nd year so it might take 2 and a half years. I’d most likely have a more relaxed year than the other students at first which would be nice. Another reason that I don’t mind going back for another Bachelor is that I’d get a chance to make friends and contacts with my peers.
For a Masters do I need to get to know one of the Civil engineering professors before I can be accepted? I know it’s probably different for each school, but how does yours work? What are the requirements?
I’m actually working in a related ‘Energy’ field, it’s the Oilsands which I don’t think there is much of in the States. I don’t study the same things as Petroleum Engineers so I don’t think my skills are transferable to the field you are talking about. Good info to know though!
I talked to my school in Canada and they allow re-admission, you just need to apply and be accepted.
If my grades were better I would apply for Law in an instant, but as it stands, I may need to attend a school in Australia. They are a Commonwealth country so it’s possible (though I don’t know the exact details) to come back to Canada to practice. Does anyone have experience with this? I could be completely wrong.
If I do choose to go to Australia, I will probably stick it out here for another year or so to help pay for it.
Of course it’s of interest, I need all the angles I can find!
“In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!”
Actually I’m glad you reminded me because I’ve thought of it before, but forgot. I’ll have to find a site with Canadian jobs as well.
Is anyone here a Government Engineer that can tell me about their job and how they got there?
Thanks again everyone
Just saw your post and had to reply because it’s a great idea. So what was the timeline of your schooling? What is your daily routine at work like? Have you seen any Mining Engineers in your profession and is there a place for them? Your job can’t be as interesting as reading Scientific American, can it?
I would start by talking to the head of the Department, not the Dean of the School, and just say you want to pursue an MS, and what will it take. What they’re looking for is a motivation and interest - an interest in the actual field is the key thing. If you go in and say to the head of the Civil Department “I want to get an MS-Civil so I can get a job”, they’re not going to work with you. If you say “I was always interested in it and didn’t realize how empty my life was without being in the Civil Department…” then they’re likely work with you.
You can then expect to be in a meeting with the Dean of the school and the Department head, where they’ll come up with a “contract” of which catch-up courses you’ll need to take. It might not be as bad as you think, since you’re supposed to be specializing in the Master’s program anyhow. For example (using Mech as an example, since I’m not overly familiar with Civil), if you wanted to get a thermal-based MS, they may not force you to go take statics, dynamics, analytical mechanics, etc. However, it could be at least a year of make-up courses, maybe more depending upon what courses you actually took.
My daily routine at work now (senior patent attorney in-house at an invention company) is very different from what yours would be starting out in a law firm, so I’ll take that question as “what was your job like when you started out?”
I got my Ph.D. in 1997, and was thoroughly sick of the whole idea of research by the time I finished. I started working in a law firm more or less as a lark, figuring I’d either hate it and find out in time to go back to engineering, or not hate it and stick with it. I’m still working in patent law - I didn’t hate it. My firm put me through Harvard Law (graduated in 2002), but that’s unusual - most places you go to night school part time (law school is three years full-time, or usually four years part-time). I had a payback period that I had to stay with them after graduation in order to “work off” their having paid for law school (and in fact I did end up paying them back 1/3 of my tuition when I came to work here).
Typically, when you start out as a new patent professional, you spend some time writing Office Action Responses. These are responses to rejections of patent applications by the Patent Office. (Virtually all new applications are initially rejected, for reasons beyond the scope of this post.) So you take a patent application that someone else wrote, look at the Patent Office’s reasons for rejecting it (which are usually based on something that someone published before the patent application was filed), and write an argument about why they’re wrong. The first one you have to do over and over again until you get the idea, but it gets easier and easier. I just banged one out this evening in about five hours (of course, I’ll review it in the morning to be sure everything I wrote still makes sense).
Once you’ve got a reasonable handle on the process of getting a patent (which is called “prosecution” but has nothing to do with the inside of a courtroom), you’ll be turned loose to write one from scratch. This basically involves interviewing the inventor(s) about the invention, doing some searching to figure out what has been done before, and then writing up a paper on what’s new about it. The application ends with “claims,” which attempt to define in words everything that is new about the invention and nothing else. To get an idea of what a patent application and claims look like, I found a mining related patent that you can look through. (I have nothing whatsoever to do with this patent, and haven’t read any of it but the abstract, so I can’t say if it’s any good.)
As time goes on, you develop a portfolio of applications that you’ve written and/or prosecuted. Since you’re unlikely to have inventors who have done exactly what you’ve been educated in, you’re likely to have to do some self-education on the fly about every new invention. To be good at it, you should think this is fun. (Fortunately, the inventor is usually available to teach you about the invention, and he is motivated to make sure you understand it. Some inventors are easier to work with than others, though. )
Once you become more senior, you can take the patent bar and be eligible to sign your own responses to office actions and new applications. (Before that, they’ll be signed by a registered patent agent or patent attorney.) If you go to law school (it’s not a requirement, but eventually the limitations of just being an agent become stifling), you will be able to also write opinion letters about patentability and/or infringement, and you may even work on actual infringement lawsuits.
All lawyers work long hours, but patent lawyers have more predictability in their deadlines than most. You’re generally juggling 3-5 projects at a time, including responses and applications, and trying to meet a whole bunch of deadlines for both ministerial and substantive filings. Your patent secretary/paralegal will save your bacon more than once, especially in your early years.
I’ve never seen a patent lawyer with a degree in mining, but I’m sure there are some. In general, the best patent lawyers tend to have multidisciplinary backgrounds and be interested in lots of different areas of science.
My husband is a professor of civil engineering at the local university. In his department, one of the professors is the director of the graduate program and handles all applications and inquiries into the graduate program. If you are interested a particular university, I would check their website and see if there is a Director of Graduate Studies (or similar) for that department.
Hey this is really ironic… I read the OP’s post the other day and the subsequent responses. Today i had an appt with my Ortho… (tore my patella still thinking i was 25 and could dunk) and found out that he went to Gtech and finished in Chemical Engineering. A couple of years later decided he didn’t like that and went to Med school…
My son was fascinated… I wondered what his parents probably said…
