What's it like being a patent attorney?

May 05, 2025

This is the first issue of The Patent Pivot (thanks for being here!) and today we’re looking at the question I get asked the most often…

The three words I would use to describe it are:

  1. stimulating,

  2. challenging, and

  3. rewarding.

💡New ideas galore

As a patent attorney, every day I’m working with inventions — trying to understand how they work, why they’re different from what exists, and how to explain them in the best way to get a patent. By definition, inventions are (or should) be ideas that don’t exist yet. As a result, I get to learn about things that the rest of the world hasn’t yet, and that’s pretty cool!

🧠Sometimes my brain gets fried

A big part of the job is trying to convince a patent office (a government agency) that they should give you a patent for an invention. Making these arguments tends to blend legal and technical aspects, and can get very complex and challenging. I am often mentally exhausted at the end of the day, but the job is never boring (and that’s a plus for me — no pencil pushing here!).

🏆This feels like a win

In my last year of engineering school, I had to invent a product. It was HARD to come up with something that worked, let alone something that would be commercially successful! If you’re in STEM, you’ve probably done something similar. With this background, I can empathize with the inventors I now work with. They are super smart, and put a lot of time and effort into what they invented. It is really fulfilling helping them make their invention a success!

Now a question for you:

What point in your life/career are you at?

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To give you a more concrete idea of what it’s like being a patent attorney, here’s an overview of last week in my calendar:

→ hit “reply” to this email to let me know if you have any questions about the types of tasks I work on!

If you’re interested in patents, I strongly encourage you to do some digging on Google Patents.

It’s a great way to get a sense for what a patent looks like and how it’s written. Do a quick search for anything you’re interested in (like sports equipment, a certain company name, etc.).

Thanks for reading this first issue of The Patent Pivot!

If you have any questions you want me to answer in a future issue or any other comments, please click below ⬇️

See you next week! 💌