I went to my local state comprehensive school and became really interested in science. I was the first of my immediate family to go to a university: I went to Durham University and studied Natural Sciences, switching after my first year to Chemistry. It was whilst at University that I discovered that my fairly strong regional accent (I am a Geordie) was in fact a distinguishing feature of mine.

After graduating with an MChem I had thought that, since my final year research project wasn’t particularly successful, research wasn’t for me, and I gave secondary school teaching a go. I got my PGCE in secondary school science from the University of York, specialising in chemistry, but I didn’t enter the teaching profession. Instead, I applied for a funded PhD at York to study a then fairly new technique for enhancing nuclear magnetic resonance, which had the potential to be applied to MRI to make diagnoses in patients at an earlier disease stage, or more quickly. I had written my third year dissertation on this whilst at Durham, and had found it fascinating. Luckily for me, I still found it fascinating and I really enjoyed my PhD research and thought perhaps academia was for me.

I stayed in the same research group as a post-doc, but found that I was starting to get bored of the same experiments and researching the same area of chemistry. Some of the research I helped with became the focus of a patent application, on which I was an inventor. I had a chat with the patent attorneys drafting the patent application and looked more into the career. It seemed to be the sort of job I would like – commercial science with some law thrown in, mainly independent working, and lots of new science to get my teeth into. I applied to a few positions and was lucky to get a job with Marks & Clerk LLP as a trainee patent attorney.

Qualifying was difficult – no one I know enjoys sitting exams! I went on maternity leave fairly early in my training and delayed sitting some of my exams around my leave. I also paced them after having my son, which means it has taken me longer to qualify than usual. Juggling motherhood with training has been tricky but manageable, and definitely worth it. I really enjoy my job – I get to work with people from a variety of organisations and it is impossible to get bored with all the new technology that I get to learn about.

Patent Attorney / Marks & Clerk

Last Updated: December 3, 2024