Save our Cat!

All good Kats like a change
of place from time to time ...
Attention all IP enthusiasts: here’s a cat in need of a good home. Catherine Lee (alias Cat the Kat) is an esteemed member of the IPKat weblog team. She is highly educated (she has a doctorate in copyright law from Oxford and the University Medal for her Undergraduate LLB studies), super-qualified (solicitor and barrister, England and Wales; solicitor and trade mark attorney, Australia), house-trained by the IP/IT Team at Clayton Utz in Sydney and has spent several years in practice doing both contentious and non-contentious work.

 At the moment Cat is doing media work for a national newspaper (enough said!) and commercial IP/IT work for an international work for an international business consultancy and would very much appreciate a change of professional scenery. If you have an interesting and exciting IP and/or IT role in London or the Thames Valley that needs brains, application, enthusiasm and measured judgment, email the IPKat here with the subject line "CatPost" and he’ll pass your expression of interest on to her. Merpel adds, Cat is very sweet for a biological Australian, and doesn’t take up much room in the office …

Photo: Katzimond (Robert Malek)
Save our Cat! Save our Cat! Reviewed by Jeremy on Tuesday, July 19, 2011 Rating: 5

8 comments:

  1. Super qualified does not appear to be an exaggeration, which makes me wonder, what is the job market like these days if someone like this cannot find a position immediately?

    Should the job market in the UK be as hard as it could appear, there is always the EPO and a quick check shows that positions for the legally trained are available:
    http://www.epo.org/about-us/jobs/vacancies/other.html

    Due to the financial difficulties in Europe I hear that having a doctorate is a clear advantage when applying for a position there. My sources inform me that many well educated Germans apply for positions at the EPO; however the EPO has to look for candidates also outside Germany.

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  2. There is always the option of a return to the sunny shores of your birth, Catherine :) Piles of mining lucre for everyone!

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  3. Why is someone so highly qualified searching for a position like this? Either the UK is unwilling to accommodate even the brightest Oxford grads who are not EU citizens, or Ms Lee is not taking the time to send online applications to firms like us plebs. If it is the former, Ms Lee should show two fingers to the UK and go to the US, Aus, NZ Canada etc. The same applies to all English-speaking non-EU citizens facing such discrimination.

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  4. @Anonymous: we Kats are not snobs --all serious expressions of interest are considered. And it's not a question of not taking the trouble to complete online application forms either, since not all employers of IP lawyers are law firms with automated application procedures for lawyers -- and some prefer to recruit through agencies.

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  5. @Jeremy: I am very sorry. I did not mean to cause any offence. It's just that I was under the impression that law firms would be lining up to hire someone with a PhD from Oxford. I have never been to the UK, so I don't know much about the system there. Maybe the economy is in really bad shape. I did not know that Oxford graduates have to try hard to find jobs like people from second-tier colleges. I thought that all top lawyers have studied at Oxford and Cambridge and hire graduates from there.

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  6. @Anonymous -- don't worry, no offence taken! Sadly, I know of several fine young lawyers from Oxford and Cambridge [and elsewhere, before anyone else writes in!] who have struggled even to find positions offering work experience, let alone training contracts and jobs. It's a tough market right now.

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  7. Sadly you need to be a national of a member country to be hired by the EPO.

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  8. Normally one would need to be a national of a member country to be hired by the EPO, yes. However there have been exceptions in the past.

    Assuming a total of 6000 working for the EPO, each for a duration of 20 years on average, it means there is the need for 300 to be hired each and every year, all of them having to be well qualified. I would therefore expect exceptions to be made also today.

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