<p>Throughout my undergrad degree I have been toying with the idea of going to law school after graduation. I ended deciding to take a job at Texas Instruments and am starting in a couple weeks. I am excited about this opportunity but I still think I want to go to law school after obtaining a year or two of work experience and getting some $. I am not sure what type of law yet (patent, tax, etc.). I am just wondering if anybody has known any engineers that went to law school after gaining work experience in engineering and if there any tips I should know.</p>
<p>I think I would be able to get into a pretty good law school (depending on my LSAT). I went to a pretty good EE school (UIUC) and finished with a 3.75 gpa. And I have had internship experience at a good defense company along with this experience I will gain from TI. I also worked as a law clerk at a good law firm my freshman and sophomore summers in college.</p>
<p>Your gpa is good, but lsat needs to be good as well. Experience does not matter for getting into law school.</p>
<p>This path is more common than you think and your experience are advantageous to get your first job, but it will still be hard as I said, there are alot of engineers in law school.</p>
<p>Be aware that the general law job market is not very good, and it is also very law-school-prestige-conscious. You may want to research how specific subareas like patent and intellectual property law job markets are.</p>
<p>Long time practicing attorney with hard science degree here. As UCBAlumnus said, it is currently a brutal market for young lawyers. Will it be the same in 3 or 4 years? really hard to say.<br>
Unless you go into IP or maybe (maybe) environmental, an engineering degree won’t help or hurt. In my experience, engineers make terrible lawyers if they have a tendency to fixate on minor issues and/or can’t write. For some reason, this describes a lot of engineers I’ve worked with. However, engineers with big picture thinking, solid writing skills, and good interpersonal skills can be exceptional lawyers because they have the ability to unserstand highly technical concepts that your average english or poli sci undergrad just isn’t equipped to handle.<br>
In any case, my advice in this market to anyone considering law school is that you are a big picture thinker, write well, have good interpersonal skills, go to a top 14 school, graduate in the top 25% or so of your class, and can do it all without incurring huge debts -the world is your oyster. For all others, proceed with caution.</p>
<p>I’ve worked with a number of patent lawyers who first worked for several years as an engineer before going to law school. Patent law seems to have somewhat better job prospects than other fields of law, because there is a bigger barrier to entry because of the need for a technical degree. There is a whole patent law thread on the law school forum. With a EE undergrad degree, patent law is the first type of law that comes to mind. And it is definitely advantageous to have some years of engineering work experience first before studying patent law. While working as an engineer, see if you can get any exposure to patents.</p>
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