Scientists move to law for patent work
The courtroom draws from the lab
By Maryclaire Dale
In a span of seven years, Loretta Weathers moved from a plasma physics laboratory at MIT to a federal courtroom, trading long days of crunching data for the adrenaline rush of high-stakes litigation.
The daughter of a Detroit autoworker, she had been tinkering with gadgets since she was a child. But after a few semesters in the prestigious Ph.D. program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she abandoned the solitude of the lab for a journey that took her to law school and an unexpected career as a patent lawyer.
It's one of the hottest niches in law: the lawyer-scientist who understands technology and can explain it to a jury.
"It's maybe not as sexy as defending a murderer, but it's sexy in a different way," said Weathers, 31, who clerked with the federal appeals court in Washington that handles patent disputes.
Even in her first year on the job, Weathers got to work on a copyright-infringement case involving an insurance company that resulted in an award of nearly $19 million. She put her science and math skills to work behind the scenes, building a database of more than 1,000 acts of alleged infringement.
Demand for these specialists is being driven by an explosion in patent applications in recent years and a growing need for lawyers to protect old patents or challenge new ones. The U.S. Patent Office estimates that 450,000 patent applications will be filed this year, up from about 350,000 five years ago.
Law professors say they're seeing more students with strong science backgrounds make the leap to law, where recruiters are snapping them up.
For at least some students who might otherwise gravitate toward a science career, the promise of much bigger paydays is a powerful lure. Others say the opportunities in academia are not as certain as they once were.
"It's an exciting area of legal practice right now," said University of Pennsylvania law professor R. Polk Wagner. "Every year I see more and more people coming into law school with technical backgrounds." "It almost scares me," said Wagner, whose protégés include Weathers. "Who's left in the lab?"
Maryclaire Dale is a writer for the Associated Press.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments