jeffl

thank you Kublakhan for saying what I have always wanted to say!

lkf725

Thanks for your input KublaKhan! I appreciate you taking your time to educate me on this subject. If engineering is harder than law (which I would completely believe), why do so many posters say that it is difficult to get into law school with an engineering degree? Is it the gpa issue? (Some on this board have said to take the easiest major possible in order to get the best gpa). Do you think that a student would be more prepared for law study by taking a more "generic" science or math degree while focusing a little more on the humanities and social sciences? Of course, I guess that might not qualify for the patent bar.

ariesathena

Engineering IS harder than law school. Doesn't mean that law school admissions people care or even realize that. They look at straight-up GPA: just how you did. They don't care that engineering GPAs are deflated; they don't care that engineering requires more work; and they don't care that engineers are, on the average, going into college with higher scores. They don't care that almost every engineering school in the country has a very high drop-out rate because of the difficulty, so that even getting the degree is an honour.

Doesn't change the fact that law school (even first year) is better than engineering. Any freakin day!

KublaKhan

For me, my E.E. degree did nothing but help my chances of being admitted to law school - but I was able to maintain a pretty decent GPA. It seems to me that top 10-20 law schools will discount your undergrad major, and focus more on the numbers (how else do you think they got to the top?). However, the bottom half of the top tier and below seem to give credit to those who had the tougher majors as undergrads.

It's been my experience that those with engineering backgrounds do better on average in law school. Likely because they've been trained to work through problems, which is what most law school exams focus on. I think most admissions offices are realizing this, and taking it into account. With that said, a horrible GPA won't make up for any degree, including engineering. As far as which undergrad major prepares you the best, it's tough to say - but if you want to do patent law, then engineering/science is obviously a must.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), the #1 factor to getting into law school is the LSAT. A good or a bad LSAT score will trump anything else that you've done.

thomaschau

Well... I think we've got the idea a bit backwards.
The goal is to become a patent lawyer, but the whole point is to get an education that gives you the technical knowledge that makes you valuable as a lawyer in the first place. If you skip the knowledge and just aim for an "easier" major just to be eligible for the exam and boost the GPA, then doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose in becoming a patent lawyer? Someone who majored in chemistry wouldn't be able to do work for, say, Microsoft because they'd have no clue how the heck the product works.

Kublakhan what was your GPA?

Would you say that it is important to have stellar writing skills? Or be a great debater or have been on a debate team? I don't know how much arguing or whatnot a pattent attorney does.

lkf725

I did not intend to say that a degree in physics or math is so much easier than one in engineering. (Do these even qualify one to sit for the patent bar?) It does seem, however, that it is difficult to fit humanities or social sciences into an engineering curriculum because of the many requirements for ABET certification. Engineers have sometimes been sited as being weak in written and oral communication skills, and I would think those skills would be important to a patent attorney, too (even though I understand the technical knowledge is paramount). How does an engineering student maintain and improve himself in non-technical areas?

ariesathena

I double-majored - engineering and liberal arts. That helped.

lkf725

ariesathena,
Were you able to complete your double major in 4 years? If not, do you think that the liberal arts degree helped you with admission to and with later success in law school?

Serin

i feel bad for engineers
they are underpaid.

my dad is a mechanical engineer with a phd but then some like fruitcake with like...a four year degree in nothing got lucky and makes millions.

hmmph. how much would a ME with a phd make do you think?

ariesathena

I did finish in 4 years... long, hard four years, but I did it. Most semesters were either five or six classes, and I took all the AP credit I could. Not necessarily a road I would recommend to anyone, but I loved it.

KublaKhan: Why do you think that Boston has a small IP market? I will agree that the legal market there is fairly small, BUT, all things considered, there is a ton of technological innovation that happens in and around Boston (i.e. the famed I-95 corridor and all of the universities). A very healthy portion of Boston industry is technology, which is not the sense I get of other legal markets, such as New York. In fact, New York (the entire state) only has 55 NALP firms that do at least 5% of their work in IP (out of 174 total firms - so roughly 31% of their firms do IP). Boston has 23 but is obviously a MUCH smaller city (51 NALP firms total, so 42%).

Z e r o X

What does IP stand for?

ariesathena

Intellectual Property.

amrik

So how is it possible to make $ with an engineering degree? The only options I see involve extra schooling.

jeffl

u can definitely make $ with an engineering degree. $$$$$$ is difficult.

Z e r o X

How much can you expect with just a engineering degree?