Law school opinions

This obviously won't work for everyone but I'll share my experience. My wife and I both graduated law school together. Because of family circumstances we were financially secure enough to consider an innovative path. What we did was approach an older attorney with 30 years experience and an established practice and offer him our services for one year for a reduced salary. In exchange he would personally mentor us and show us the ropes. (This worked out so well in fact that he unfortunately became very dependent on us and assumed we would work for next to nothing forever.) Anyway, to his dismay we left and according to our plan started our own practice. However, we took another innovative route and formed a company which made investments that entailed heavy legal work, ie tax liens, foreclosures, judgment collection, distressed real estate acquisition. Therefore we were never client dependent, always worked our own hours and took on as much (or as little) as we saw fit. Now nine years later we own a large tax lien portfolio, and have bought and sold more than thirty-five single family homes. My wife has dropped down to part time to spend time with our two small children. As they say, "two roads diverged in a wood, we took the one less travelled by and that has made all the difference".

 

Its interesting that Tillman wants to go into intellectual prop. That was the field of law i thought i wanted to go into. Does anyone have any insight into IP law? Now i am actually reconsidering though, if i graduate at the top of my class, im now thinking i could go to one of the top engineering grad school and get a cool job. I dont want to graduate mid pack and end up designing dishwashers.
Anyway, are there any other intellectual property lawyers here? From what i understand it isnt the most exciting field to be in, but its profitable.

 

Tim,
I am an IP lawyer doing mainly patent work. Whart is an IP lawyer whoe deals in copyright. I am sure we both have opinions about the IP route.

 

Tillman:

I knew from an early age that being a lawyer would be a good use of my skills. However, the practice is not all analytical skill and a good memory. It is tough, you are being paid to deal with people at very rough times of their lives... your paid to deal with other peoples' major problems.

If I had any advice I would say work for a corporation or yourself. I was an intern at an online brokerage while in law school and then hired, so it can be done without much experience. Then I started my own practice in litigation, so that can be done too (made 6 figures my first year, although I was very lucky). Now the prospect of working for a firm and making 60 for 70 hours a week is not too exciting. I am very strongly thinking of changing my career.

Just be very sure you want to be a lawyer. The education is valuable, but the 100K in debt could have been used better in my opinion and you can always hire a lawyer if you need one. BTW if you need one and you are a lawyer, you should probably hire one who's an expert in the field who knows the area a lot better than you unless that is your practice area anyway.

 

Art and Crusing: I do not bemean solo practice; what you guys have done is admirable. It is not easy, though, as i'm sure both of you will acknowledge, though may be way more fulfilling in the long run. I am not advocating big firm as the "way." I am suggesting that good training will help, even if Tillman goes on to work for himself. It just seems to me that going to law school and hanging out a shingle is a tough road these days, particularly if you want to get top level work, as a specialist. But then again, there is no magic formula and some of the most successful lawyers i know did it their own way. Bless you both.

Tillman: There are numerous kinds of IP and IP lawyers and practices. First, the patent law itself is far different than CR or TM, and within patent law, there are any number of specialty fields; and within those, people that do prosecution and people who litigate and people who do deals. Ditto with CR and TM. Culturally, the lawyers practicing is these areas tend to be different, too. I am, by comparison to my patent brethren, a different beast, but i do a huge amount of work in the "old" law, dealing with the intricacies of the 1909 Act, estates, heirs to songwriter's catalogs, book and other publishing arrangements, etc., some of which a patent lawyer will never get near. Sometime, in the technology/Internet licensing and litigation area, what i do overlaps with the knowledge base of patent lawyers and i need their involvement, or they need mine. Trademark lawyers tend to work on consumer goods, brands, advertising and marketing issues; these come up in what i do, but are not central to my practice. On the other hand, trademark lawyers will occasionally run into copyright issues in the unauthorized use of content, protection of brand indicia, etc. The practices will also differ based on geography. In NY, the non-patent ip practice is, i think, more diverse than that in LA, which is primarily beholden to the entertainment industry. Cities in the midwest will get less arty stuff, and more industrial property issues (widget protection), but there are of course exceptions. I have done design patent litigation in the auto industry in the midwest, and there are lawyers representing authors and fine artists in towns from Bangor to Sante Fe. Look at the kind of cases the firms are actually doing and you will see what i mean, since if you read their website and glossy PR stuff, they are ultimately impossible to differentiate.

 

With all due respect, I think there are enough lawyers in the USoA already.

However, if you really want to have a job of beating people into submission; or protecting people where someone else is beating them into submission, be my guest.

 

Whenever someone prefaces what they are saying with the phrase, "With all due respect," i check my back. So, Mitch, what are you doing to earn the Mother Teresa award? (BTW, i hate lawyer bull****, and bull**** lawyers, but i feel i am entitled to say that, being one. Why discourage somebody? )

 

is the Golden Gate law school in the bay area a good law school? how is it rated among other law schools? Thanks.

 

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/rankindex_brief.php

This can give you a good amount of info concerning ranking of law schools. There are also rankings for all kinds of grad schools, and also undergrad programs at the US news site linked above.

 

Ric, Golden Gate is a Tier 4 law school in the new US news Rankings. It is one of the lowest rating law schools in the nation.

 

Hello,

Does anyone have any comments about the on-line law schools?

One one "Concord" appears to offer a program that allows one to sit for the bar exam?

 

Art;

You have the right attitude to be a lawyer, and I wish you well.

Wart;

You may have the right attitude to be a lawyer also.

As to my Mother Thresa Award, I support NORML and MPP

 

Yo brotha TIll,

Any updates?

Dale, would this be contradictory to when we were talking about Y the last few days? Just want to get a grasp on things, before pulling the trigger.

 

Just when back and looked at my last post. Can't believe I said that, but after all, it is true. When we stop breeding a-holes, I'll be out of business, but I suspect I'll be around for a while.

Art

 

Tillman - I was a licensed architect for 8 years when I started law school at night. Like you, going to the 3-year day program was not an option w/ mortgage payments, etc. hanging over my head. The down-side of four years of night school is that it is just too damn long - you will be very tired for four years. The up-side was that my classmates were predominantly similarly-situated professionals who didn't have the time or energy to engage in the competitive bs that we witnessed with many of the day students.

If at all possible, you really should combine your professional experience w/ your law degree to sell yourself and to differentiate yourself from the 25 year-old day program grad with the fantastic grades. A lot of my night classmates were patent examiners at the US Patent & Trademark Office who stepped right into extremely lucrative IP practices. In my particular case, I left my architecture firm halfway through law school and clerked at a construction law boutique for the last two years of school. I graduated in only the top third of my class, but with the double threat of architecture and law, I was able to step right into a large national firm with a major construction law practice.

Since law firms tend to lose money on first and second-year associates (because they still have to be trained to practice law and not just talk about it), you are uniquely positioned to be more useful to a boutique firm by virtue of your background than the average first-year.

Even if you figure out that litigation is not your bag, you can still learn a lot about the legal underpinnings of the industry segment where you specialty lies by litigating a least a little while. I litigated for 6 years which was about 2 years too long for me - in any complex document litigation, you will see really smart people spend an exorbitant amount of time, money and brain power fighting like children over document production and other discovery games. On the other hand, the love of the fight is simply in some lawyers' DNA - and those guys absolutely have a place in the world. Everyone hates the pitbull lawyer . . . until they need one. I now do a purely transactional practice; people are happier at the front end of a job and even though negotiations can get real testy, everyone wants to build a great project. I will live longer this way . . .
good luck

 

You're so right. I used to do expert witness work, but no more. I guess that I missed on the pit bull gene.

I try to explain this to people. Namely, that folks like Art can't help themselves. They like tearing people a new arsehole!

Dale

 

Yea, what happened, Tillman? Amazing how much has changed in my life since this thread was started. I wasn't really considering law school seriously when this was being discussed, and now I'm preparing to attend.