<p>Just be sure to get advice on the right kind of engineering as an undergraduate major. I know a young man who, last I heard 2 years ago, was an unemployed law school grad with solid training in patent law. This shocked me because he was just so brilliant at everything - summa undergraduate and top of his law school class. Perhaps by now he’s found full employment; I don’t know. He was piecing work together. Based on his intellect, I expected him to soar!</p>
<p>The analysis I heard was that his undergraduate major in civil engineering had too few real-world applications in patent law, compared to chemical or mechanical engineering. A lot of new inventions are in pharmacology and robotics, not roads and bridges. For him, it was too late for a re-do. </p>
<p>I recall his explanation that a patent attorney needs great questioning skills and his own science background for this reason: the lawyer’s questions of an inventor must discern whether the invention is narrow enough to offer a brand new solution, but wide enough to solve an authentic problem (not a problem invented by the inventor).</p>