Family friend: What area of law are you going into?
Me: I'm thinking about corporate law.
Her: Corporate law is very boring. Very boring. But you can make a lot of money.
Me: I don't --
Her: Weren't you interested in patent law?
Me: I --
Her: Patent law is very interesting. Much more interesting, even though there is not as much money.
Me: I don't --
Her: My daughters, one does what she wants and doesn't worry about money, the other is thinking about money all the time. Always money. People are different, you know?
(I nod.)
Her: Don't think about money only.
(I nod.)
Her (shaking head): Very boring.
I started law school thinking I didn't know what I wanted to do, but knowing I didn't want to do corporate or criminal law.
I took corporations last year and hated it.
So, yeah, I think I might be a corporate lawyer. I was never interested in finance, and I felt like corporate lawyers just pushed money around and enabled rich people to get richer. But this summer I did a fair amount of corporate work and enjoyed it. I get it now. It's not about raising money to get more money, it's about raising money to put your drug through clinical trials. It's not about structuring stock sales to get an extra three cents per share, it's about structuring stock sales to protect your friends and family and the two venture capitalists who believed in you enough to finance your big idea. It's about accomplishing a goal. Until now I thought I would go into litigation, but the more I see and learn about litigation, the less I like the aspect of constantly arguing and rarely resolving.
I gave patent law a fair chance, and I think I'd be more interested in it if I were in a different field, like biology. In software, my area of expertise, I am not convinced that patents are a good idea. When I worked at Large Software Company, we were strongly encouraged to file patents -- in fact, you couldn't get promoted without a certain number of filings to your name -- but I always resisted because it didn't seem right to lock up a way of doing something. It's not like a drug, where you spend years and millions developing it. There aren't huge barriers to entry in software; it's all about how well you implement your idea. Two people can take the same algorithm and one can produce a crappy product with it and the other can turn it into a huge success. In software, patents impede progress without providing necessary protection. Combined with the formalism and endless back-and-forth with the PTO, for me, patent prosecution seems like an unfulfilling job. It would be a great career move... if only I liked it.
It does worry me a little that finance does not excite me. I like the nature of the work -- helping clients to achieve their goals -- more than the subject matter. (Although I do like contracts, and didn't mind at all when I spent a few days this summer sifting through boxes of them.) And the corporate lifestyle, dropping everything on a moment's notice to please a client, is not easy to pair with family life. But I think this is the right decision for me.
Me, a corporate lawyer... the only thing I would have expected less is becoming a PD.
Anyway, I don't graduate for a while so I have some more time to think.
