<p>$200,000/year starting? No one told me that! It is high, but I don't think it's that high. A large firm will pay you about $125-$150k/year, but I've never heard of $200k starting - maybe if you have a Ph.D. or something, but I've never heard of that. It's still a ton of money though, and, unlike engineering, it goes up a lot from there. </p>
<p>Patent attorneys, from what I understand, do either patent prosecution or patent litigation. Patent prosecution is not harassing people with patents; it basically is writing patents and applying for them from the US PTO. Patent litigation is suing someone who infringed on your client's patent, or defending a client from the suit. Infringement = using the same or similar technology without a license to do so. </p>
<p>You may need to pass the patent bar to be a patent attorney; this is an exam issued by the PTO (Patent and Trademark Office) and has fairly strict requirements about who can sit for it. You need to be an engineer or a scientist, and some types of engineering (architectural, biomedical for starters) and science majors are excluded. You can do a google search for the list - but chemE definitely qualifies. The good thing is that, as so few people can sit for it, patent attorneys are in high demand.</p>
<p>Here are the numbers for petroleum engineers (generally the highest paid of all the engineering specialties). Average salary (not average starting salary, but average salary for all petE's) is $83370. And remember that PetE's are generally the highest paid engineers. Hence, that's a far cry from saying that all engineers make over 100k.</p>
<p>Personally, I am not particularly incensed about the supposedly high pay that engineers make. If you really want to talk about big money for your degree, how about those guys who get easy, do-nothing majors where you never have to study and you can still get top grades, like the Social Studies major at elite schools like Harvard, and then end up getting jobs as investment banking analysts on Wall Street. First-year I-banking analysts can pull in more than 125k (salary+bonus) in their first year, and can pull in over 200k in their third year. Then they can go to business school to get their MBA from Harvard, MIT-Sloan, Wharton, or other such places and then go right back to Wall Street and really clean up. If you have your MBA and you have 10 years of experience at a major Wall Street bank, your compensation is easily over 500k, and is probably over a million. </p>
<p>there are very few people that make it into the 200,000 plus range. Its a great link but it the Prerequisite is not any where close to the average. I-banking is a great job where most people ( prob 75%) will not make it over 200 k a year. MAny will make 150k but not 200 k+</p>
<p>is a job in engineering as unstable as i hear? i also hear that engineers are likely to get a job only in some select cities, is LA one of these? I hope.</p>
<p>Husband, Mechanical Engineer, BS & ME from RPI, 30+ years of experience -- makes $100K working for a big defense contractor. </p>
<p>Me, Civil Engineer, BS from RPI, ME from Texas A&M, AND MBA from U of Chicago, 30+ years of experience -- make $90K for a local consulting firm.</p>
<p>NONE of our engineering colleagues -- and we know literally dozens in many different engineering fields, working in both the public and private sectors -- makes more than $150K, even after 30 - 40 years of experience.</p>
<p>And no one has mentioned the fact that engineers need to continually upgrade their skills and take additional classes/training because technology changes so quickly. Most states require Professional Engineers to show a minimum number of CEUs (Continuing Education Credits) in order to renew their license each year.</p>
<p>Hi worried_mom! I'm thinking about going to RPI next year... would you recommend it? And are you and your husband happy with your choice of engineering?</p>
<p>To anyone else: Doesn't location effect your salary? Couldn't a NYC engineer surpass $100,000?</p>
<p>To Marines920: Both my husband and I would recommend RPI for anyone interested getting a solid engineering education. We feel it is a good size -- small enough for individual attention but still big enough to offer a wide variety of classes and research opportunities. It also has excellent faculty and labs/facilities. RPI is well-respected within engineering circles -- but virtually unknown by anyone else (particularly west of the Mississippi). We were both in the co-op program and feel that gave us a big boost in starting our careers.</p>
<p>That being said, RPI is only for those who are committed to engineering and/or related sciences and are willing to put in the necessary hours of study. It is not an easy school -- although, as has been expressed by others in this thread, no engineering school is easy -- but RPI academics are more demanding than most. You also have to want to be there -- because Troy, NY is NOT the most exciting place for college students.</p>
<p>ariesathena,
Could you please tell me who employs patent attorneys, where they are likely to find work and IF they are likely to find work? What is the success rate of those taking the required exam? My son has expressed some interest, but I don't know anyone who practices in this field.
Thanks!</p>
<p>I just happened to be reading this thread, and thought I would answer your question.</p>
<p>I have a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, and am finishing law school in May. Most patent attorneys either live in N.Y., Chicago, D.C., Houston, L.A., or the Bay area. However, there are small markets in other places (like Denver, SLC, the northwest, Boston, etc.) .</p>
<p>As far as the patent bar goes, the passage rate when I took it was 40% or so. It is a difficult test, but passable with the proper amount of preparation.</p>
<p>Back to the original topic, it is my opinion that engineers don't make enough (which is a big reason for my going to law school). My father is also a E.E., and has 30 years experience. He still hasn't broken 100k/yr (however, he never was interested in management, which would have increased his salary). It doesn't seem right that I'll be making more my first year than my father has ever made, but that's life. Also, after having done both a B.S. in E.E. and law school, I can tell you that E.E. is quite a bit harder than law school. Anything that difficult should pay a lot of money.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Doesn't change the fact that law school (even first year) is better than engineering. Any freakin day!</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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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.
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<p>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.</p>
<p>Kublakhan what was your GPA?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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%).</p>