If you’re a motivated individual who always wanted to find yourself in a career that embraced both a PhD and a doctorate in law, you may be looking for practical options that put the two degrees to good use.  Contrary to what some may think, there are other career options besides patent law for you to consider.  In fact, there are lawyers with PhDs in the life sciences working in a variety of careers that utilize both bases of knowledge.

If you’ve been working in research and have been behind a research bench for a few years, you need to know that your law degree will be best used if you are a more sociable and verbal type of individual. In general, lawyers love the art of negotiation and of making deals with others; they enjoy working as a member of a team; they value making money and don’t fear dealing with financial issues. If you like working in isolation, legal work may not be the right career choice for you to make.

One career path to follow would be to work for a company that needs lawyers to deal with regulatory agencies—agencies like the US Food and Drug Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency. This would include working for biotech or pharmaceutical companies directly rather than working for a law firm that takes on these types of companies as clients. When you work for these types of companies, your career will be far different than if you work for a law firm.  In general, the job is well-balanced between law and the sciences and you’ll be working in a position that is business-focused, stable, and usually fairly pleasant.  In a corporate environment, you aren’t constrained by the billable hour so you don’t need to account for all your time and you’ll be working with a team of talented professionals.

A related option is to work for one of the many law firms out there that will pay you well to work in the firm as an attorney working on behalf of biotech or pharmaceutical companies. The salary is often better than directly working for the company, but you’ll deal with the stresses of collecting payments and with firm dynamics that such positions inevitably create.

While the salary working in a law firm may be better than working for a biotech company, you will be less likely to get the generous 401k plans, stock purchase plans, stock options, and health care plans offered by the larger biotech and pharmaceutical companies, so the actual pay and benefits you take home may well be roughly the same as with the BioPharma companies.

Another disadvantage of working for a law firm is that the smaller law firms and boutique firms don’t have the time to mentor people who are just starting out.  These firms have stricter time constraints so there is less time to manage newcomers or to offer training programs.  Nevertheless, boutique firms will offer hands on experience and are valuable options for learning this kind of law.  You will need to know the federal law well regardless of where you work and you will need to have an in depth understanding of the products or medications you are representing for your company to the regulatory agencies.

Another possible career choice is to be thoroughly trained on regulatory legal issues by working for the government regulatory agencies like the US Food and Drug Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency.  These organizations don’t always offer quality training programs, but may provide you with valuable work experience.  Such agencies will often open other career doors for you, but still are not as valuable as, say, a good boutique firm. In any event, a few years working in the regulatory environment will give you an intimate knowledge base in the regulatory side of law. From there, private practice becomes an easier and more attractive option.

Stretching further afield, you can create a career out of both degrees in some of these career paths, particularly if you have business experience.  You could work as a hospital administrator using skills in business, finance, interpersonal interaction, understanding regulatory rules and legal issues.  The following are the top law schools for healthcare law:

1. St. Louis University
2. University of Houston
3. University of Maryland

Additionally, you could head up a company, particularly in the Internet field. You may need to establish credibility through previous work in the corporate world, and you’ll need to know both the law and the field you’re working in.

Still other options involve the fields of biotechnology and pharmaceutical teaching or in positions writing patents for the BioPharma sector. These areas will require more of your scientific skills than some other areas. These are the top law schools in intellectual property:

1. University of California-Berkeley
2. Stanford University
3. George Washington University

Environmental law requires skills in both law and the sciences. There are jobs with the Environmental Protection Agency that may require your training in the life sciences as well as in environmental law. The top twenty law schools in the US for teaching environmental law are:

The important point to remember is to find the kind of work you like to do and create a path for you to get there. There are educational stepping stones along the way and you may have to learn the field in a job you won’t want to do forever but will help you get to where you want to be.