Outstanding opportunities for jobs and networking: the Pierce Law advantage
Working in the field while in law school leads to social networking and jobs
November 2009 : The Financial Times names Pierce Law now the US's foremost institute for the study of intellectual property law.
The theme throughout the IP @ Pierce Law area is that the combination of excellent academic and scholarly IP law education with a wide spectrum of practice based courses and opportunities provides Pierce Law graduates with a competitive advantage as they “hit the field running.” Employers have long known that hiring a Pierce Law IP graduate is an excellent investment as they do not need the extensive and expensive years of mentoring and on the job education of most law graduates. There are dozens of ways Pierce Law IP students interact with IP professionals leading to meaningful professional connections and career opportunities.
Pierce was founded with the idea that students would benefit from field experience and has consistently offered robust clinics and externships covering all areas of IP.
35 years of practice based education
Thirty-five years ago President Robert Rines had been a successful patent lawyer his entire career. What he experienced was that no new lawyers knew how to draft and prosecute patents. They knew some law but had no skills. Pierce Law was founded with the goal of graduating well educated IP lawyers who have solid practice based skills. Only two schools taught patent law in any meaningful way before the founding of Pierce Law and neither taught patent prosecution. This has been confirmed by Pierce Law after discussions with senior IP faculty at these law schools. The Patent Bar at that time was very small in number.
Rines collected a nationally unique team of patent lawyers that would present students with the most well rounded patent prosecution education. The IP Patent Faculty team at that time included a law firm patent lawyer, a university/corporate patent lawyer and a former patent examiner from the USPTO. This team set up the patent law and practice curriculum. The first courses were Patent Law and Practice I & II, which remain the backbone patent prosecution courses to this day. Today, Pierce alum patent lawyers work at top patent law firms and corporate patent departments.
Over the last three decades the IP curriculum has steadily grown to one of the top in the U.S. Like our faculty with a blend of expertise in both law and practice, our courses consistently incorporate law and practice. Our goal is to produce graduates who are at the level of a second or third-year law firm associate.
Practice based IP education is one cornerstone of the Pierce Law IP advantage. Students are offered practice based experience in a wide range of settings beyond the classroom including:
- Clinics
- Externships
- Clerkships
- Moot Courts
- Writing competitions
- Teaching and research assistantships
- IP student organization networking events with distinguished speakers and visitors
- Jobs during the summer and academic year
- Attending professional organization meetings
- Mentoring programs with IP professional organizations
- Attending IP career fairs
- Attending IP related alum events
- Mentorship opportunities with IP faculty members
Dateline 2008: Held at Northeastern University Law School, 9 Pierce students from the trademarks class and IP clinic attended the Boston Patent Law Association's “TTAB Comes to Boston” event, experiencing live oral arguments. The man in the middle is John Welch of Lowrie, Lando & Anastasi. On the far right side is Professor Stacey Dogan of Northeastern University Law School. Professor Lembree is next to her. The students Richard Benavidez, Minghong (“Sally”) Wang, Alexandra Suryakristianto and Sharon Mutawe.
