<p>What’s interesting about patent law is that you have to have an engineering degree (or other similar technical degree) to be qualified to practice patent law before the US PTO. So it’s a field full of ex-engineers and scientists, and lots of the legal issues are ABOUT engineering and science. It has also been increasingly important commercially over the past few generations. Top patent lawyers do extremely well (and bottom patent lawyers can starve . . . but that’s true of any field).</p>
<p>That said, patent law is not the only field that ex-scientists go into. A former partner of mine was a nuclear physicist with a PhD and ten years working at Argonne before he went to law school, and he became a Mergers & Acquisitions lawyer. Other people with that sort of background often find themselves in finance law, or even tax. Or they may litigate issues related to technology – something you don’t necessarily have to be a patent lawyer to do.</p>