Studied: Masters in Chemistry at Imperial
My first seat was in intellectual property (IP) disputes, with particular focus on patents and the pharmaceutical industry. My STEM background was immensely helpful in this seat, as research tasks included scientific research and the documents involved in patent disputes (the patent itself, expert reports and litigation experiments, for example) were all highly technical, and therefore easier for me to get to grips with having studied Chemistry. I was fortunate enough to work on a long-standing patent infringement case over a patent for a non-invasive prenatal testing kit during my time in the seat, which resulted in our client obtaining a public declaration of non-infringement and confidential settlement. Other areas of law I was exposed to within this seat included “soft” IP such as trade marks, copyright and design rights, together with the cyber practice (data protection and cybersecurity). My STEM background also helped me with these areas, for example by having experience with coding, as well as generally having developed problem-solving skills at university.
My second (current) seat is in the corporate energy team. Although focused on company law, there are many technical aspects to the work and my STEM background has definitely helped me to grasp concepts more quickly, for example in relation to oil & gas and power (electricity) contracts. The tasks include research, drafting and analysing documents which also lend themselves very well to the skillset of a STEM student, such as attention to detail and thinking logically.
