In the early 1990s, a Long Island law firm, Scully, Scott, Murphy and Presser, worked with Stony Brook University to set up a legal internship for science PhDs. The internship offered training and new career prospects to young scientists, and was useful for the law firm as well. At that time, the biotechnology industry was relatively new, but it was clear that law firms who wanted to work in this area would need patent attorneys with scientific expertise. “As the technology, especially in the biotech area, got more and more complex, they needed people with advanced degrees.” But there were a lot of open questions for law firms. What was biotech-related patent work like? What sort of work could they expect from newly-minted PhDs? If an intern decided to pursue a law degree, should the law firm help guide them through this process? The internship program with Stony Brook offered law firms like Scully, Scott, Murphy and Presser a chance, as former intern Pam Ancona puts it, “to dip their toes in the water.”
