Legal and Tech Experience

Question

I am a Software Engineer with some experience(7 years). In the recent years, I keep hearing and reading in various articles that people with extensive legal AND tech experience are very valuable and searched, as almost nobody has good background in both law and IT(on a tech position, not some fake manager). What I keep failing to understand is what exactly do you do if you are a such individual? How are you so useful if you have some good knowledge of legal and tech affairs? As I became fairly interested in law and legal affairs lately, I am asking about advice if it is worth focusing on this from a career point of view, or if it should stay just an interest?

Answer 1

Legal dispute resolution is the application of law to the facts of the case

Lawyers understand the law. Subject matter experts understand the facts. Someone who can do both at the same time is valuable.

For example, virtually all litigators, arbitrators and adjudicators in construction law that I know have engineering, architectural of building degrees or are ex-tradespeople. Usually as their first career.

Answer 2

I realize this question was asked a while ago, but I wanted to add to this in case people find it useful. I am a scientist by training but have worked in the legal industry my entire career (>20 yrs). Today I call myself a legal technologist and work in a Legal Tech startup. One of the things you might do when working at the intersection of law and tech is build technology to help a law firm or a legal department in a company, do something in a more automated way.

For example, my first legal tech solution was a database app that allowed me to create claim charts (very particular type of legal analysis in patent litigation) in a very efficient way. Before this app I would spend a lot of time manually copying and pasting information between similar elements in a claim chart. This was not only tedious and boring, but also prone to errors if not done carefully. I built my app to solve all that.

Today there are many legal tech companies that focus on making legal work more efficient, more effective, faster and thus less expensive (because most lawyers charge by the hour) for clients. This is what is driving the growth of legal tech solutions being built. Today, many legal tech companies are using various forms of AI (ML and NLP being the most common) to augment the work of legal professionals.

If you're a technologist (e.g., developer) you don't need to have experience in law to get started; just having an interest is useful to get your foot in the door. Of course if you can educate yourself on legal tech and provide examples when trying get that first legal tech job, that's a bonus.

There are many more examples and many more use cases, of course, but this should give you a flavor of what you might do in this growing field. Happy to provide more info to anyone interested.

Answer 3

If you have an engineering or science degree you are likely academically qualified to become a patent agent. Patent agents are considered "registered practitioners" by the USPTO, authorized to represent others before the office. This is the identical authorization held by patent attorneys who need to go through the identical process to become a registered practitioner. That process includes meeting the educational requirements and then passing the so-called patent bar.

The rights and obligations relative to the USPTO are identical.

Depending on your formal education a "Software Engineer" may or may not qualify to take the patent bar exam.

Only a registered practitioner can represent others before the USPTO. Orthogonally, only a licensed attorney can represent others in court. A patent attorney is someone who can do both.

The URL for the Office of Enrollment and Discipline.

—- A second occupation would be a mediator who specialized in disputes with a technological aspect. In most places this occupation is not restricted to attorneys.