How do I pick a Law School? Disbarment Metric Analysis?

This equation has nothing to do with this post

How do I pick a law school? 

The methods to select a law school are as nearly varied as the reasons for attending one.  Clinic options, professorial notoriety, attractiveness and marriageability of the student body, starting salary, prestige, parental edict, etc., the list goes on. 

However, one metric that I don't hear all that often is "likelihood of disbarment."  Sure, it is not as fun to contemplate the odds that your highly expensive investment in upper-middle class lifestyle preparation will be snatched away due to some fiduciary or ethical indiscretion, but some thought should be given to the possibility. 

Recently, NYS opened up the attorney registration database for programmatic access (meaning you can download and manipulate the fields as a Excel, JSON, CSV and other format types, as well as access the data directly from a web app). Nominally, this will allow you to check your reg status without having to go to your department website, but I digress. 

Of course, the first thing I did was manipulate the data to find out how many attorneys were disbarred who were admitted to the NY State Bar. According to the list, about 1800 people have been disbarred out of 350,000 records going back to 1899. 

The next thing I did was try to chart the data via school. What I got was hundreds of records, some for schools I had never heard of (Northumbria - I am looking at you).

The next problem was that people arbitrarily decided how to write their school (NYU vs N.Y.U vs New York University School of Law).

To solve that, I ran some regex fixes to condition the edge cases I could see. I tried to format the data by stripping out "Law", but when you try to strip out "School" - weird things happen. So there are some duplicate entries (like Brooklyn and Brooklyn School (i.e. stripped out 'Law').  Once I got a super-set, I manually conditioned the data to a top 20 set. Here are the results. 

Yea Alma Mater! 

Now, on its face, Brooklyn is the highest, but I would provide some caveats. The records go back to 1899, and the first Brooklyn Law reference I can find is in 1918. That means that it is possible that the 160_+ disbarment for BLS grads could be amortized over the course of nearly 100 years, the same goes for NYL. However, I am not sure what happens when you are disbarred and then deceased. 

***The data documentation does not give info about current status vs historical stats.  I would suggest that the Brooklyn number represents those persons that are still alive, but I have no way of knowing.***

However, when you restrict the entries to people who were admitted in 2000 or later, you get a different chart.

So what accounts for the difference? 

I mean we could just default to "Touro et al are lower ranked schools, of course their alums get into more problems", but that seams like the intelligent design answer to this science questions.  Maybe the fact that top law school grads in NY go into politics, business and large firms where there is a less chance that they will get into trouble? More lower ranked grads go solo (by choice or by default) and solos always have a higher chance of getting into trouble? 

Who knows. Any Theories, drop them in the comments. 

 t

Why you had a hard time getting an IP job 2009

Not my children, but they raise an interesting point

There was [is] a misconception that "IP" people and especially "Patent" people land on their feet after a traumatic work event.

In most cases these traumatic work events are solitary affairs to be met with stoicism when they arrive, and laughed off once gainful employment is once again obtained.   Job loss, it should be noted,  is not uncommon. It is definitely not uncommon in late 20th / early 21st century America. In general this theory holds true, with a strong caveat concerning Bio-background patent prosecutors (a situation which I have addressed before). Engineering background IP practitioners have generally found it easy to obtain new employment.

However, at the tail end of 2008 and well into 2009 and beyond, there was a uncommon tightness in the IP employment market for all background. This tightness didn't comport with the conventional wisdom about IP.

Conventional wisdom held that IP slightly a-cyclical or even lightly counter-cyclical to the overall business market. If IP was influenced by the broader economy, it was the result of companies exploiting their IP to the full extent possible in a difficult market. This theory held that lots of new applications, litigation and diligence work would be generated in a mild downturn as people companies and organizations attempted to maximize license fees, infringement judgements and acquisitions.  Litigation and diligence can be the topic of a different post.

Here we take a look at the wisdom as applied to applications, and find it lacking.


source: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/10/where-americas-inventors-ara/7069/

As evidenced by the chart title, the above graphs the number of application filings by US inventors per year.  Instead of seeing a steady churn in work, we see an inflection point, then a steep and accelerating drop off until 2010.

What this chart shows is that "peak-application" (like peak-oil) hit sometime before anyone was actually aware a problem was brewing. As 2007 transitioned into 2008, the trend accelerated such that applications were approaching free-fall in by the end of 2008.

However, if people remember correctly, the Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy did not hit the news until September of 2008.  So this drop off was not the result of the economic collapse that erupted in the wake of Lehman, but was part of the systemic breakdown which caused it. While everyone was keeping their eyes glued to the "market", IP watchers should have been analyzing the IP "market".

The second chart below breaks this data out to the highest regional markets for patent applications.


As far back as 2005, there was a leveling off in the application filings. This would have been the point to consolidate and solidify staffing levels. Instead, 2007 saw some of the largest summer associate class sizes. New York suffered severely. From a pre-2007 height of  over 1,000,000 applications to a current number of just over 600,000; New York had seen a 50% reduction in filings. By 2011 the IP filing market was only 10-20 % off the lows.

A 50% reduction in patent work in New York means a lot less law firms getting paid, and a lots less associates on the firm's rosters.

What these two charts show is that triggering event for the Great Recession (Lehman Bankruptcy ) was not the triggering event for the decline in patent filings. The gears were already in motion back in 2006.  The reasons for the run up and crash are likely as varied as reasons for the crash in the broader market; over-supply, irrational belief that history always points upward, empire building at the cost of sustainability. Any, and likely all, of these factors played into the massive disruptions that gripped law firms in 2009-2010. (see Towsand, Morgan, Darby et al.)

Firms are not quick to innovate in the best of times. Facing a 50% drop in work load, billings, and profits is not the best of time. All of this conspired to make it difficult to get a job in the IP field in 2009. Thankfully, the broader market is slowly improving.

As the line representing new filings continues on its upward march, we would do well to keep a close eye on the movements and metrics of our own "market" s well as the broader market.

Infringement frequency pushback

As a quick post, the following chart is presented from Google's fantastic Ngram viewer.

First, a bit of information regarding Ngram. The viewer is one of those Google 20% projects (i.e. not a core google product) that came out of the Google's massive data trove generated when it optically scanned libraries worth of print books. This scanning was itself not without controversy. See here.

The viewer allows you to search for the frequency of a word, or phrase, and see how that phrase has changed over time.  This allows for hours spent traveling down the internet time sink looking for interesting word / data combinations.

However, I think (and IP nerds agree) that the interesting output is related to the frequency of IP terms in written english. A look at the graph above demonstrates that for all the recent talk about Patents being a drain on industry, the frequency of discussion has remained relatively flat since the 1800s. Time bias being what it is, you see a peak in the late 1940's (probably a combination of medical advances and post WWII electronic / solid state electronic development.) and then a precipitous drop off to a nadir in the 1970's.  For 30 something developers or businessmen, it looks like there has been a terrible rise in patent usage.  However, even in 2009, with Trolls in full swing, the rate of  the usage of patent terms has yet to return to the nominal historical average.

More interesting, copyrights, long the bane of innovators, has been on a steady historical march, with no signs of slowing.

What is slowing is the march of IP infringement references.
     In the above chart, the concept of a "trade secret" seams to occur far more than any of the traditional Federal IP rights. There appears to be a high burst in the mid-80s to the 2000. (Potentially the rise of Japan and China? Topics for another day).

Patent, copyright and trademark infringement references hit their peak in 2000 and have been decreasing ever since.

It should be noted that these are references to the specific terms in published works. It does not include online media (which might be siphoning off the results post 2000)).  However, it would be odd, and a post in its own right to not have some correlation to the prevalence of a term in print and its prevalence in all media.

Anyone who is selling the concept that IP rights, their enforcement, or position in the mind-space of our society needs to justify those claims in light of the charts above.

BitCoin and Licensing Fees

This post assumes you are aware of what BitCoin is and why someone might think it is a good idea to ask for payment of license agreements revenue in it. 

For those who don't know, Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer, anonymous digital currency.

Huh?

Exactly, the concept of Bitcons, how they are made, who has them, and what they are doing with them, are all beyond the scope of this post. I direct you to the Wikipedia site.

For the purposes of this discussion, all you need to know is that Bitcoins are a digital exchange medium. Think of it like an electronic commodity, cyber-gold, if you will. The goal is to have (by whom
?, why? Again, complicated) anonymous commercial transactions over the internet. This would free people from the prying eyes of repressive regimes, allow greater freedom of commerce internationally, and allow people to skip out on paying taxes.

You read (ha! all 2 of you) this blog for IP information, not Libertarian Economic Theory; so what's the point? Well, the point is that we are rapidly converging on a world in which small entities (single person firms, small skill based collectives) are all global companies. Each App creator, Web designer, even self-published author, has the ability to distribute and obtain revenue from a global audience.

One way in which small businesses can gain revenue is by licensing or otherwise monetizing their IP. The most common way this is done is by signing a contract that specifies a certain amount of money, either up front or on per - purchase - basis in exchange for access to the IP. While licensing your tech out for BitCoins in a up-front paid up license, is... a position; licensing your IP for a set number of Bit Coins in the future, or sales in made in Bit Coins, is not advisable.

"Why?", you howl, "I was about to license my tech, for anonymous tax-free Cyber-Space money!"
Well, the problem with anonymous tax free Cyber-Space Money is the chart below.

This chart shows the exchange rate of Bitcoin to US Dollar over a 1 week span. I think the reason not to use Bitcoin as the unit of value in your agreements is pretty obvious. If you had licensed your tech, for 1 BitCoin = 149.00 USD for use in certain Apps, and those apps went on sale on the 6th of April, then you would have made a bad call. (*note, Bitcoin has recovered some market value from the lows put forward, but the volatility remains.)

While initially each sale of your tech was netting you 150USD, by April 10th each sale was netting you 250.00. Huzzah. Then, April 11th rolls around. Devastation!  You are now netting 75USD per tech sale. This is a 50% reduction of your originally agreed upon license fee. Did you lose a war? Zombie Plague? Nope, just the random volatility of the commodities market.

The reason why you don't do this is the same reason why you don't license your IP for the "sale price value" of a Condo in Dubai in 2034. While there are arguments to be made for the upside, there are clearly reasons why such as speculative agreement is not the best way to maximize your IP value.

The way to maximize your IP value through licensing is to license your tech (or art, or published works) in the currency of a regime that places a strong value on IP rights, and a stable currency. Secondly, your agreements should be constructed to provide you with a fair market value of the IP, not speculative upside seeking. A stable license agreement for the duration of a copyright (Life + 75 years, i.e. see Jackson, Michael) is a great way to provide multi-generational economic stability.  Gambling that on an electronic currency is not the best use of your assets.

Jordan Garner

In honor of Comic-con - a rebuttal to the End of IP

This week is Comic-con in New York.

Comic-con is awesome.

Comic-con could not be possible in a nation without a strong commitment to intellectual property protection. While people may differ on the benefits conferred by the Sonny Bono amendment (AKA the Mickey Mouse Protection Act), no one honestly argues that the characters in their favorite comics, video games and movies, should be free for anyone to pass off as their own.

That being said, the Anti-IP crowd (which is really an anti-software patent crowd), has yet to make the empirical case that nations without IP protection produce more intellectual property than nations that have weak or strong IP regimes. The Manga output of, say South Korea vs China, speaks to this.  The reasons are varied, and the subject of individual posts.

However, in honor of Comic-con, I present the following (terrible) Comic which demonstrates some of the problems that Anti-IP advocates face.

(all "YEA!" should be read as though spoken by the talking food of "Yo Gabba Gabba".)

jgarner@leasonellis.com

Start-up Ecosystems

As anyone who has read this blog (all 3 of you) know, I love ( more in the Storgian, as opposed to Erotic sense) infographics. It is an outgrowth of a background in Bioinformatics and a general appreciation of good graphic design. So what? All of this is just a haphazard way to introduce another nice infographic that I found the other day.

While I very much like the presentation found here, I take issue with the lack of attorney representation. Of all the people that Start-up founders love to hate, lawyers and especially IP attorneys, are in contention for the top spot.  This is in part due to a justifiable apprehension of the dreaded "Cease and Deist" letter.  However, I think it is also due to a lack of understanding about IP in general. I once spoke to a founder who told me "I don't want to deal with patents because it is too hard to know what's out there and who owns it".

While this may have been true a decade ago, the internet has vastly lowered the cost of entry into the Patent Searching game. Simple patent searches are key to a Founders due diligence. Anyone who wants to get cash from a venture capital firm should know before hand how to answer the question "does this infringe someone else's IP". It is essential to know the space you are working in, not only to know who your challengers are, but also who your investors might be. A patent search can let you find companies and individuals that are operating in the space.  Armed with this knowledge, you can track down investors who understand your technology and want to be a part of it.


Jordan G. Garner 
jgarner@leasonellis.com













Source: Udemy Blog