Niles’ story
I started work in Mewburn’s London office. Having attended a couple of open days at IP firms, I had an inkling of what the work entailed, but no actual knowledge of how to do it. This is perfectly normal.
In my first year, I found the best way to get by was to adopt a “have a go” attitude. Everyone is quite aware you don’t yet know the law, or what to do, but having a go, making mistakes, and learning from them is the best thing you can do.
We’re lucky to have large Trainee cohorts at Mewburn – so there’s always other people to chat to in your year and above. Monthly tutorials at different offices are also a good excuse to get together and meet colleagues from other offices.
With the Mewburn scheme, you get the chance to spend time in different offices and teams. In my case, I moved up to Manchester for my second year in the firm. By this time, I had already worked with three Partners in London, but moving to a new office allowed me to see how a completely new team worked. I think this really helps to form your own hybrid style – rather than becoming a carbon-copy of just one principal.
Peppered through these training years are various sets of exams, all preceded by a mix of in-house and external tutorials. Again, having a group of Trainees around you to bounce off really helps in the run up to these difficult exams. Studying for these whilst working and meeting the demands of the role itself was challenging but you do get through it and I now know it was well worth the effort.
Qualifications and day-to-day
After about three years at Mewburn, I decided to settle in Cambridge, and soon after passed my final set of exams to become UK and EP qualified.
Your case work pre and post-qualification doesn’t really change. At Mewburn, by and large, work is sent out in your name from the start, so clients already know you’re part of the team. All of this really allows you to take ownership of your work. What changes over time is your level of independence and responsibility, which gradually increases as you develop.
Day-to-day, your work involves a lot of reading, thinking, writing and re-writing. Being able to understand and explain how complicated stuff works, both in writing and orally, is the cornerstone of our work. You get to do this across a broad variety of subject-matters and situations (i.e. when drafting a patent for the first time, or defending a patent at the European Patent Office in Munich).
Our work is very deadline driven. These deadlines might be set by the patent office or your client’s commercial needs. Either way, this can lead to fluxional (often high) workloads. Alongside case work, there are great opportunities to get involved with business development or training. In time you also develop a better commercial understanding of your clients, so you can work with them on protecting their IP effectively. This is not to say you don’t keep learning once qualified. Everyone frequently finds themselves in new situations and needs to keep abreast of developments in the law. The technology you work with is also constantly shifting, so you have to keep up with the latest innovations as you go.
Overall, if you like the idea of working at the cutting edge of science, but with an eye on the shifting legal and commercial world, then I would recommend training as a Patent Attorney.
