Practical Realities of Being a Patent Attorney - Salary, Targets, Remote Work and More!

Hi all! Lots of questions rolling in from you about the practical realities of being a patent attorney, so let’s talk about them!

💸 Salary 💸

A lot depends on your location, but I think you can reasonably expect to earn in the 6 figures when starting out if you are in North America. In my area (large city), the starting salary for newly-minted lawyers at major firms and boutiques is around $130k. If you are in Europe, unfortunately the starting salaries will be much, much less (I think around €30k or less), but you don’t need to go to law school at least!

🎯 Targets 🎯

Most law firms operate on a target system. Every minute that you work you “bill”. Billing means keeping track of how much time you spend on a given task for a given client. When a client gets charged, it’s based on how much time was spent on their file.

As an attorney at a firm, you will likely have a billing target. This is a set number of hours you are expected to bill every year. Usually this is anywhere from 1400-2000+ hours, depending on the firm.

You should try to find out the billable hour target of any firm you are interested in working at so you can get a sense for how many hours you will be expected to work.

🏠 Working From Home 🏠

Luckily, working from home seems to be sticking around in the legal field. From what I’ve heard, most firms are allowing at least 2 days working from home. I am still working 4 days at home (it’s amazing!).

👫 Teamwork 👫

If you’ve been scarred by lab partners or group projects, you will be happy to hear that patent law is a pretty solitary job. Other than some meetings with superiors or clients, most of the time you will just be working on your own.

I probably spend about 90% of my time working solo, which, as an introvert, is heaven. If you are more extroverted, I suggest working frequently in the office for more face to face time with partners and group socialization.

Getting a patent is not as simple as many lay-people think. Let’s take a look at the typical (simplified) process:

Patent prosecution attorneys spend the majority of our time working on tasks related to these steps. Things can get more complex and vary across jurisdictions, which keeps things interesting!

Thanks for reading this issue of The Patent Pivot! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you. See you next week! 💌