[chmod775]

As far as made-up "bullshit jobs" go in this society, patent lawyers are likely well-positioned on the compensation scale, but if you enjoy actually building something and having some fruit of your labor to show at the end of the day, it might not be a good place for an engineer.

You'll be "solving" a problem that is the result of a completely artificial and particularly badly designed system. Such jobs can get to you as you curse the stupidity of the people who came up with and run that system daily.

That said - as long as nothing changes - someone has to do the job.

[JTbane]

I don't think I could personally make it as a lawyer in any capacity; from those I have talked to in the legal profession it seems like 100% pushing papers around.

Also, I don't agree with patents in a political sense.

[D13Fd]

It's not mindless "pushing papers around" -- that job is done by paralegals and administrative assistants.

But 50-100% of most attorneys' time is spent either "reading things," "researching things," or "writing things," if that is what you mean. That is the bread and butter of legal work these days, whether it's writing briefs, e-mails, letters or something else, and reading legal opinions, research materials, discovery, etc.

Basically most of your job as a patent litigator is to read things and occasionally depose people, then research things, then write things (not always in that order). The remainder of time is mostly spent on client communications and marketing.

Occasionally you may make it to trial or a mock trial, where you spend a lot more time on your feet and speaking (or sitting and listening while someone else speaks), but still generally around 25-50%+ of your trial time is spent reading and writing.

[amusedcyclist]

Its pretty mindless, even the "reading" and "researching" is extremely dull. The level of logical complexity isn't that great and its a lot of overworded nonsense.

[hnfong]

Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

The body of knowledge in law is vast and some areas can be intellectually stimulating as well (depending on one's interests). "Overworded nonsense" that you usually see (in contracts or legislation, I suppose) happens when less than stellar lawyers are made to write stuff upon a deadline, and is the equivalent of "spaghetti code". Usually, it's fine since nobody (I think) gives you a bonus for succinct writing when drafting a contract. But you might get in trouble for missing some "edge cases". There's also a lot of cargo culting (magic Latin incantations) and building on questionable templates (technical debt). Sometimes people intentionally write in weird illegible ways to impress people (think Perl one liners).

Anyway, when most programmers see an unfamiliar codebase for the first time, they'd probably think most of the code are "overworded nonsense" until they fully understand the "business requirements" and the special cases implemented. (This is where the adage against complete rewrites comes from.) Unless you're really an expert in the area of law, you're probably not qualified to say that some legal texts are overworded nonsense.

But yeah, there's more parallels in law and software engineering than one might think. I'm a software engineer by trade, not a lawyer, but I do have a degree in law, and I often read up on cases or occasionally do my own legal research mostly for fun and personal interest. I would contend your "extremely dull" claim. TBH I might read more legal texts than Other People's Code, the latter which I generally hate doing, and is usually more boring for me (and occasionally infuriating when I know the coders spewing writing crap instead of putting effort in making the stuff succinct and clean).

That said, believe whatever you want.

[amusedcyclist]

My friend group is about 60% lawyers, so I have a reasonable sense of what I'm talking about. I think a lot of software is also over-worded nonsense, and I try very hard to make sure I don't work in a place where that's encouraged. But the issue is that the law is the law and the over-worded nonsense is inescapable and very much encouraged. Now you can say only lawyers are allowed to say that, but a lot of lawyers will say that (in private anyway, not if you're paying them). A lot of the complexity comes down to the fact that its very hard to change the law. I understand your parallels with a piece of software, now imagine a piece of software built slowly over 100s of years by programmers with very divergent motivations, and which required massive amounts of consensus to make changes to. Oh and no automated testing or types or any mathematical correctness built in anywhere, which is actually the stuff that makes software elegant and powerful. That would be one truly horrific piece of software, and imo thats what legal code is.

[hnfong]

Ah. Interesting how you choose to associate with "scum of the earth" then! :D

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30067644

[D13Fd]

It depends on what you are doing. Legal research and writing can be anywhere from kind of dull to fascinating. That's also true for pretty much any job, so I'm not sure what your point is.

[amusedcyclist]

That I think if you're going from software to legal work you're likely to be bored.