<p>Hi all,</p>
<p>So right now I'm a MS/PhD student in electrical engineering scheduled to receive my MS degree in December. I have the choice to continue to PhD, but after nearly 3 quarters of study/ research, I realized that this is not for me. So I have been considering the route to patent law. I was wondering if I can get some opinions on how good of an idea this is. I heard they have a lack of EEs in patent law? Is it a good idea or even possible to pursue patent law practice immediately after graduating with a MS, or would I need a few years or experience? How about the pay? Would I see a big difference? And lastly, I heard patent law may be extremely dry and boring, is this true? I would greatly appreciate any comment, thanks!!!</p>
<p>There are quite a few people out there that might say electrical engineering is dry and boring.:)</p>
<p>haha no argument, i myself probably will say ee is boring... but is patent lawyer worse? the one sentence summary i got for it was "you read papers"...</p>
<p>Well, let's see. No. 1; anything can be or become dry and boring, and that includes research. It all depends on what interests or excites you. So the first question is, having decided that continuing with the Ph.D. program and/or research in general is not for you, why is that so?</p>
<p>No.2.; having answered no. 1, then what are the options for using what you have learned in a different career path? Patent law is one, but as a practical matter you won't be able to start practicing it as soon as you graduate. For one thing, you have no experience and for another you have no qualifications yet. If you'll see my main post and others I have made, it's not necessarily easy to get into the profession, but it certainly is possible, especially for EEs at your level. Work experience will be a plus but might not be an absolute necessity. However, you need to get an entry level job. At the present time you're not attending or even admitted to, law scjhool (or even applying to any) so law firms might only be interested in you if they are looking for a "technical advisor" (sometimes called a "patent engineer"). See my main post for information on that.</p>
<p>No.3; think about what other options you may have at this time other than patent law (and other than going into engineering). Are you a good writer? If so, perhaps technical writing, scientific publishing or even science-related journalism. Or perhaps you want to continue in research but in a different field.</p>