[richardfontana]

FWIW: IAAL and I also have a CS educational background but never really worked as an engineer outside of academia. I spent a few years in the middle of my legal career working primarily on patent prosecution, which is the work also done by patent agents.

I would personally not recommend patent prosecution to any lawyer or aspiring lawyer. Patent prosecutors hold a second class status within the legal profession, something I only realized when I started working in that area. The work is inherently challenging (in a bad way) in a typical law firm context resulting largely from the fact that it is generally fixed-fee work (with those fees generally having been driven down over a long period of time) in a context where lawyers have nominal billable hour expectations. You are under pressure to churn out patent applications in a relatively short period of time. I believe this is one of the main reasons for problems in patent quality seen particularly in the software space over the past two decades. The work itself is highly non-intellectual in nature.

Maybe the considerations are different for a patent agent who doesn't intend to go to law school. Some firms will pay for patent agents to go to law school part time which could be beneficial if the patent agent were to graduate and go into some other specialty (but I suspect that hardly ever happens).

Edit to add a related point: For anyone with a scientific or engineering background who goes to law school, I recommend resisting the temptation to take the USPTO's patent bar exam (this exam is also incidentally something patent agents take). It might seem to be a useful credential, but by becoming a registered patent attorney, you will get pigeonholed into a patent prosecution practice group within a law firm, which is problematic for the reasons I give above.

[syedkarim]

From my observations, I think patent litigation is pretty high up on the legal totem pole. Patent lawyers who focus on actual litigation (through federal district courts, as opposed to the USPTO PTAB (Patent Trial and Appeal Board) are responsible for cases that have legal fees at the $10M-level. But to support your point, a trial attorney who focuses on patent litigation is not necessarily a patent lawyer (though can be). There is a sort of arbitration at the PTAB for patent disputes, which does require a USPTO-registered attorney, but that's a process that is cheaper for all parties involved, so it's less money for the law firm. I assume those lawyers have less prestige at larger firms.

From my experience, patent lawyers who focus on patent prosecution bill at rate ~$300 - $500; patent litigators are $500 - $1000 (and I'm sure some litigators are much higher).

[richardfontana]

Agreed. For those who don't know, the term "patent prosecution" is US legal industry jargon referring to the process of applying for and obtaining a patent. The term is used as a shorthand to refer to a common specialty area that focuses on that kind of work and certain related non-litigation matters. Patent prosecution specialists sometimes also get involved in litigation but typically in a secondary or supporting role. This to some degree reflects the two-class system I referred to. From personal experience and anecdote it is common for patent prosecution specialists to seek to get involved in litigation because, essentially, it is "easier to make your hours" as I remember one colleague putting it, but often opportunities are limited because of the unofficial two-class system that exists.

Patent litigation is an important sub-area of litigation work and practitioners in that area are not especially likely to have STEM backgrounds (unlike patent prosecution specialists) and are not expected to be USPTO-registered. You can see evidence of the two-class system in the academic backgrounds of the lawyers involved -- patent prosecution specialists are more likely to have attended less prestigious law schools than the patent litigation specialists at a given firm. It's my sense that outside the US the equivalent of patent prosecution lawyers are typically not members of the legal profession and often work in small firms focused entirely on patent and trademark procurement grunt work.

[D13Fd]

This is accurate. Patent litigation is at the top and pulls the most fees by far.

Of course, it can also be very challenging. Setting aside troll/NPE cases, you're sometimes competing against the best attorneys at the best firms in the country, in cases where the amounts of revenue at stake vastly exceed any amount that the attorneys could reasonably bill (even at the typical rates of $500-$1500/hr).

[dmoy]

My dad told me a story once about being paid for expert witnessing for patent expertise.

The short version was that some company's legal team was looking to hire him for expert witnessing. They knew who he was, and had a rough idea of his opinion already, and knew that he was more or less opposed to their position. So he asked them why they'd be willing to pay $?!?/hr for him to read stuff and tell them that he thought they were wrong.

They basically told him "if paying you $?!?!? allows us some insight into the opposition's potential strategy that lets us file a motion that just delays a ruling from morning until after noon recess, that will recoup all the costs we pay you". And apparently they weren't even exaggerating because in half a day they pulled over an order of magnitude more than $?!?!? in sales.

Evidently this sort of paying experts who disagree with you to help form your case strategy is just a normal thing, and it makes sense to me, I just couldn't fathom the numbers at the time. The amount of money specifically in drug patent cases is staggering. There is a long, long list of drugs that pull in over a billion dollars a year in sales.

The US's total (legal) drug market is like half a trillion dollars.

[D13Fd]

Don’t discount the nice side effect that when you hire the opposing parties’ best possible expert, they are then precluded from working for the other side.