New Toys and the Law

Okay, I'm about to spend a bunch of money. Not only has Apple announced the iPod touch, but TiVo just announced that TiVo To Go and Multi-Room Viewing will be available for the Series 3 and TiVo HD models (see Gizmodo).

So you know why as an engineer I'm totally geeked out about the new TiVo development, but what does this have to do with the law, you may ask? The whole reason these features were not available on the Series 3 so far is a combination of Copyright, Contract, and Telecom Law.

(NOTE: If anyone posts asking for it, I will provide citations, but I'm going to be lazy because I don't think you really care)

A few years ago, the FCC ratified a deal between the cable and consumer electronics (CE) industry that would allow CE to make televisions, VCRs, DVRs, etc that would work with digital cable without needing a separate set-top box. Unlike the Series 2 TiVo, which only has to obey Copyright law, but is not constrained by contract or regulations, the Series 3 TiVo (and now TiVo HD) are made under these FCC rules, and therefore have to play under those rules.

The FCC made sure that most cable content could not be tagged "copy never" by a cable operator, but the cable industry still had control over what kinds of outputs were "secure enough". For a number of reasons, some contractual, some business, the cable industry is reluctant to allow an output unless the content industry agrees. However, the FCC left themselves the authority to hear appeals on outputs.

Earlier this year, a different output protection technology (DTCP-IP) actually invoked the FCC appeals process. Then, before the FCC could rule, the cable industry and the DTCP people came to an agreement and the DTCP people withdrew the petition. Presumably, this helped pave the way for the TiVo people to come in, and get their stuff approved.

There was a rumor circulating that one of the reasons the cable industry was reluctant to approve DTCP-IP or TiVo To Go has to do with a "Most Favored Nations" clause in another contract. I'll devote another post to how MFN clauses work and why engineer/lawyers are much better off for understanding math and logic better than most lawyers.

So I assume you want to do patent law?

So all of you 2Ls (or 3rd year evening students) with an engineering degree are probably used to this question by now. If the answer is "yes," then congratulations - you have a job. Bonus points if you worked at the patent office.

But... what if the answer is "no"? There are plenty of other fields that a person with an engineering degree is specially adapted to, and even if you don't want to do one of those, isn't a career change part of why you're going to law school anyway?

So here's a list of legal fields engineers might choose, and why it makes sense... feel free to add your own in the comments.

Areas where technical knowledge is useful:

• Technology Transactions - this one's pretty simple, and seems related to patent law, though most firms treat it as a completely separate practice. You understand the technology, you speak the language of the business people, and you are good at problem solving.
  
• Regulatory: FCC / FDA / EPA /FERC / etc. - fundamentally, these regulations are all about the technology. The clients know the technology very well, the regulators know it reasonably well, but the lawyers generally don't. While arguably lawyer ignorance creates a veneer of plausible deniability, everything is going to go smoother if the lawyer has the technical background to know what is going on.
• Copyright - face it, these days people only care about copyright when it has to do with the Internet, and most lawyers don't understand the Internet. I get sick of all of the lame analogies I hear ("series of tubes"), and a lawyer who understands how the Internet really works, when a copy is made, how a copy is used, etc, is more likely to come out with a useful, legally cognizable result.
  

Areas where the engineering brain is useful:

• Tax Law - it's all about problem solving and numbers, two things engineers are very accustomed to. You have a set of finite physical constraints, and your goal is to maximize efficiency (minimize taxes).
• Corporate / Securities / M&A - if the firm has a technology-centric focus, it's easy to see how an engineering background can help, but even if not, the engineering mind can help. Corporate lawyers always gloss over the numbers, so that's not a factor here. However,this is another place where there is room for creative problem solving within a realm of finite constraints.
• Construction Law - this really could go up there if you're a civil engineer, but construction law involves getting a lot of pieces into place. The loan documents, deed transfer, and construction contracts themselves aren't particularly interesting, but part of what a construction lawyer does is help with the project management. This is something engineers (should) know how to do very well.

I'm sure there are good reasons why engineers are good at family law, general litigation, or aviation law, but I don't know enough about these practices to really get into it. Any ideas?

The Evening Student Dilemma

It's fall recruiting season, which means there are some hundred law firms jumping over each other to offer students at my law school with no work experience a yachtload of money to work ridiculous hours doing the work of a very smart trained monkey. This is all well and good if you are one of the aforementioned law students with no experience, but having spent some time in the workforce, I want a job that matches my experience.

I don't need a yachtload of money, but I don't want to take a paycut versus my current, smaller boatload of salary for my day job. I've had this discussion with several other evening students - we want a job that values our work experience. In a cubical recruiting world, where the HR people want to shove you into a neat little box, we are an irregular polygonal prism (yeah, that's dorky even by my standards).

This isn't just my vanity thinking I'm too good for first-year firm life. One of my former coworkers who has returned to her big law firm to hopefully make partner very soon cautioned me against working at a firm. She is one of the few people I know who actually likes working for a firm, but she fears that someone with experience and outside knowledge would be undervalued at a firm like hers and it would essentially waste my talents.

I'm afraid to graduate law school without a legal job, but I think I'm going to have to take that leap of faith to be able to show up on an HR screen as a lawyer with experience in X, rather than a law student.

Awkward Initial Post

So today at lunch I was talking about how some guy in a World Series of Poker match I was watching had quit his life in a large law firm to play poker, and how cool that would be. My friend mentioned that his friend, upon being laid off from an engineering job, started making a bunch of money from a combination of a blog and poker. This, obviously, made me decide to launch a blog from which I never hope to make any money from, and play a bunch of free online poker.

So I can't write, I can't play poker, I was a bad engineer, and I don't want to do patent law. This promises to be the BEST BLOG EVAR!