What Kind of Patent Attorney I Want to Be
When people ask why I’m drawn to law, they usually mean, What field are you interested in?
Patent law, I answer. That part’s straightforward.
But the question that actually follows me around like a persistent shadow—the one that sometimes keeps me staring at the ceiling at 2 AM—is much more personal: What kind of patent attorney do I want to be?
Because while getting the title requires passing a bar exam, embodying it meaningfully? That’s the work of a lifetime.
Beyond the Business Card
I’ve had the privilege of working with people across the innovation spectrum: brilliant engineers who instinctively downplay their breakthroughs as “just solving a problem.” Startup founders running on caffeine and optimism who think patents are luxuries for companies with real offices and matching furniture. Clinicians who are literally saving lives but can barely find time to document their methods, let alone protect them.
In those moments, I’ve realized something important: I don’t just want to be an attorney who processes intellectual property. I want to be a translator between worlds, a believer in overlooked brilliance, a bridge across gaps of understanding.
And as I’ve reflected on this path ahead, I see three distinct roles I hope to grow into—each one essential to becoming the kind of patent attorney worth becoming.
1. The Scholar: Precise, Curious, Perpetually Learning
I have an almost embarrassing fascination with how things work.
It probably started with those long nights debugging Python code in a basement lab at Stanford, squinting at error messages until they blurred. Or maybe it was that frustrating month spent training a machine learning model that stubbornly kept misclassifying chest compressions as background noise. Or perhaps it crystallized the first time I truly understood that “non-obviousness” in patent law isn’t about what seems obvious to me over morning coffee, but what would be obvious to someone skilled in that particular art.
Legal reasoning has its own peculiar beauty. Like elegant code, it rewards precision and logical structure. But to wield it effectively? You have to genuinely love swimming in the details.
So yes, I aspire to be the attorney who doesn’t just skim the footnotes but finds them fascinating. Who reads case law not just for precedent but for the evolving story of innovation it tells. Who never stops asking, “Is there a more elegant way to protect this particular idea?”
Because you can’t effectively protect what you don’t deeply understand. And you won’t fight for what you don’t genuinely respect.
2. The Helper: Accessible, Grounded, Human-Centered
Let’s be honest: patents can be intimidating. They arrive wrapped in specialized terminology, substantial fees, byzantine forms, and rules that seem designed by a particularly sadistic bureaucrat. But behind every application stands a human being—usually someone with a valuable idea and not nearly enough time, support, or sometimes confidence.
I want to be the kind of attorney who demystifies rather than mystifies. Who explains complex concepts without condescension. Who responds to emails promptly because I remember what it’s like to be on the other side, waiting anxiously for answers. Who makes people feel like they belong in the innovation ecosystem—especially if they’ve never seen themselves there before.
Some of my most rewarding moments have come from working with first-time inventors, early-career engineers, and startup teams who are just trying to survive until next week. They don’t need someone to impress them with legal jargon. They need someone who shows up fully, listens carefully, and makes the complex navigable.
3. The Leader: Ethical, Strategic, Systems-Minded
We’re living in an era where the boundaries between “invention” and “computation” grow blurrier by the day. AI systems are generating code and images. Open-source tools are democratizing development. Global, distributed collaboration is becoming the norm rather than the exception.
And yet our legal frameworks for protecting innovation often feel like they’re running on legacy systems.
I want to be part of the conversation that thoughtfully upgrades these systems—not just to catch up with technological reality, but to make them more fair, more inclusive, and more forward-looking. That means thinking critically about access. About who our current systems exclude. About whether we’re protecting the right things in the right ways for the future we want to build.
Leadership in this context isn’t about having the loudest voice. Sometimes it means knowing precisely when to speak up, when to amplify others, and when to ask the questions that shift the entire conversation.
The Through Line
At the end of each day, I want to be the kind of attorney who approaches the work with fundamental integrity. Who makes space for voices and innovations that might otherwise go unheard. Who knows the rules deeply but also recognizes when those rules need thoughtful evolution. And who still feels a genuine spark of excitement when someone says, “I built something new—can I show you?”
That’s the professional identity I’m cultivating. Every research paper I write, every patent claim I help draft, every conversation with an inventor—they’re all small steps toward that larger vision.
Because being a patent attorney isn’t just a career achievement to unlock. It’s a significant responsibility, a position of trust at the intersection of law and innovation. And I intend to carry it not just competently, but compassionately.
After all, the attorneys I’ve most admired weren’t just the ones who knew the law best (though that matters). They were the ones who remembered that behind every patent application is a human story—of problem-solving, of persistence, of believing something could work when others didn’t see it.
That’s the kind of patent attorney I want to be. Not just good on paper, but good in practice. Not just technically correct, but meaningfully helpful.
And if that sometimes keeps me up at night thinking about how to get there? Well, the best innovations usually do.
