December 7, 2018
Discussion: From Science to Law: Careers in Patent Law
Host: Gabe Magallanes

Randy Micheletti spent a day on campus for a townhall-style lunch presentation to talk about careers in Patent Law. Randy received a B.A. and a M.S. in Chemistry before obtaining his J.D. Since then, he has been actively involved in Intellectual Property law for a number of different law firms and has recently started his own practice for business innovation, specifically to help small startups and biotech companies secure their IP portfolio.

For the lunch event, Randy spent about 40 minutes on a presentation that outlined his path to where he is right now. Randy also spoke on the many career opportunities that are similar to Patent Lawyers, but do not require a J.D. He spoke about Technical Assistants, Patent Agents, and Patent Examiners career opportunities. He also outlined the expectations for all of those careers (regarding hours, pay, etc.) and compared them to working as an actual Patent Lawyer. He stressed the importance of having scientists who are actually skilled in the craft to advise and teach the lawyers who are not technical experts.

After his presentation, there was about 30-40 minutes of Q&A that was very informative. Randy gave very practical advice and handed out business cards for anybody who had further questions.

Throughout the morning and afternoon, Randy had 7 one-on-one meetings with students and post-docs to discuss topics of the student’s choice.

All in all, there were 56 RSVPs for the lunch talk and 7 requests for individual meetings. There seemed to be a pretty high level of interest for Randy’s visit. He said he would be very happy to visit again.