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[sciencegrad]

I had a course on IP law in undergrad that was offered for science and engineering majors.  It was taught by an IP attorney and he brought in several of his coworkers to talk about what their work is like. 

"IP attorney" could mean anything (patents and/or trademarks/trade dress and/or copyright and/or trade secrets), but it usually means litigator. The kind of attorney who might conceivably get hu's tuition paid for by a law firm is not a litigator; they're a patent agent. That's a completely different job. You don't get involved in lawsuits; you draft the patent specification, etc., in other words the documents that are submitted to the USPTO in order to get a patent. You draft patents... i.e., write technical documents describing inventions in very precise and legalistic terms... all day. That's the job. That's who you need to talk to if you're interested in it. That kind of lawyer can have great quality of life, partly because the law firm hours aren't what they are for litigators and partly because you could go for a career with the Patent Office, where instead of writing patent applications you would read them and decide whether to grant a patent or not, and that's a federal job with federal benefits, a zillion holidays a year and the possibility of working mostly from home.

But I wouldn't count on getting your tuition paid for. Research the possibilities, but don't base your plans on that unless your research shows there's a good reason to. I'm not aware of any shortage of science/engineering PhDs with law degrees, or any shortage of patent agents.

He said his work was pretty evenly split between patent prosecution and patent litigation.  One of his colleagues focused nearly solely on trademark litigation.  I wouldn't want to do solely litigation or solely act as a patent agent (if I wanted that, I would've passed the patent bar and avoided law school and grad school altogether).

According to the New York Times, there is a shortage of patent lawyers, and that an advanced degree in engineering would be quite beneficial.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/business/new-law-creates-demand-for-patent-specialists.html?_r=1

[jackofallchem]

And any reasonably smart person could sit through a bar review course, do the work, and pass the bar without ever having set foot in a law school.

And any reasonably smart person could pass most final exams after attending a well-conducted two week review course based on the actual content of the final (as is a lwa review course) without ever attending the class in question. So what?
The important relationship would be between measures of success in law school (measured by things like membership or even editorship of Law Review, overall grades, grades in courses in one's current speciality, etc.), the quality of the school, and success in the profession. My observation (very limited sample I admit) is the results of this prediction model would be stronger than you think.

I don't know what field you are in, but I seriously doubt most people could pass most final exams with a two week review session without taking the class. 

Sample Question: Part 1. Verify that the 2s AO 2s(orthogonal) = (1-S)^1/2•(2s-S•1a) is orthogonal to the 1s AO and is normalized. 
Part2.  Let an MO have the form a(1s) + b(2s) + ... when expressed using a nonorthogonal 2s Slater Type Orbital and the form c(1s) + d(2s)+... when expressed using an orthogonal 2s Slater Type Orbital(from part I).  Show that c=a + Sb and d=b(1-S^2)^1/2 where S is <1s|2s>.

Yes, not too hard if you have had the class, but really difficulty without the class and the prerequisite math classes.

[canonicalkumquat]

From the article (emphasis added):

For example, law schools do a fairly good job of teaching students how to reason, fostering critical thinking, and equipping them with analytical skills, which are not a feature of a typical undergraduate education, but are foundational for the practice of law.

*weep*

[marktpawlowski]

The LSAT is a hurdle; law school is a hurdle; the bar exam is a hurdle. None of these obstacles exist because it is believed that you need to overcome them in order to be a qualified attorney; they exist so that only a select few can have a piece of the pie. 

The LSAT is reading and logic; law school is reading and memorization; the multistate bar is rote; the written is drilled.  The performance section, which asks you to read statutes and case law and apply them toward a specific set of facts, is the only thing which might gauge whether you should be an attorney.

I am an attorney, and I would like to see the system change.