

Ask HN: What to do with a worthless law degree? - daftJD

Hi all-<p>Next year I'll be finishing up law school at one of those ivy league places.  I was a CS undergrad and would like to get back into the startup scene.  Is there any work for hackers-cum-lawyers?  Thanks in advance.
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rdouble
RPX in SF is looking for hackers to automate their patent trolling business. A
lawyer-hacker would probably be even more valuable. If you're into evil, might
as well go all out. No half steppin'.

I worked on infirmation.com back in the day and the lawyer who started it sold
it for tens of millions of dollars. Starting a startup that preys on the
insecurities of other lawyers (does someone at Dewey, Cheatem and Howe make
more money than me?) seems like a good bet.

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inerte
Have you ever seen someone writing IANAL on /., Digg, Reddit, or even here?

Start seeing it as $$$$$. Unless you want to do pure technical stuff, than the
law degree doesn't have much value, indeed. But there's a huge intersection
between law and tech, and few people that really understand both.

Heck, setup a blog and talk about laws affecting tech stuff. The recent Lessig
DMCA notice, what iPhone developers can do against the Store late payments or
app rejections. The HN's front-page is a goldmine for someone who can
understand the law. I am pretty sure you can live off ads if you put effort on
it. Sprinkle with consulting (using your blog as a personal marketing tool).

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wmf
The legal industry is fat and ripe for disruption; with CS and legal knowledge
you could be doing the disrupting. See Agree2 as an example. What is a startup
topic that non-lawyers are afraid to touch?

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russell
I second this. But you might want to go into practice for a couple of years to
get the feel for information flow in a law firm and the places where you can
leverage your expertise. I suppose you could go the IT route in a firm, if you
really dont want to get into law. My guess is that the law school view of a
firm is quite different from the view on the ground.

I think vertical disruption is virtually untouched, because the hackers who do
the disruption tend to go into more interesting environments than vertical IT.

