Indian Lawyers: What are the options for an engineer, if he wants to pursue a career in corporate law after graduating and few years of work experience in India?

Your engineering degree won't add much value or gives you any edge to your practice as a corporate lawyer. However, people with higher engineering degrees (Msc/PhD) are highly in demand in IPR firms (especially to deal with patents). You can consider pursuing your LLB from IIT Law School, Kharagpur or you can appear for the Patent Agent's Exam and become a patent agent (for which you don't need to have a degree in law). If you are an entrepreneur or want to startup a business or you are in a job which requires you have a basic understanding of the business laws, you can consider enrolling yourself for http://startup.nujs.edu/, offered by NUJS, Kolkata - one of the India's premier law school.

That's the beauty of law, you maybe from any field you can still make a career in law.Full time work options: Intellectual Property Rights, more specifically Patents is one field of law where Engineering and technical knowledge of various scientific processes comes in handy. All the law firms and IPR companies need  technical people for their IPR practice. There are various IPR courses being offered by almost all the National Law Schools and even WIPO, which could be taken through correspondence and even online. With the growth of IT related crime (cyber crime) and Information Technology being used for Money Laundering, white collar crimes etc many law firms are coming up wits the Cyber crime or Information Technology specific litigation and advisory teams. They certainly need the expertise of an IT qualified person to take them through the technicalities involved. Top Tier law firms in India are following the International trend and incorporating Knowledge Management Teams ( a few law firms already have these teams).  These teams mostly work on documenting  the firm's knowledge bank and training lawyers on how to use previous transactions, templates etc for their future transactions. It involves dealing with some or the other kind of software, which is used for collecting and disseminating all the data. They definitely would be interested in an Engineer who can understand the technicalities involved, help them upgrade and makntain their softwares, train lawyers on using these softwares etc. If you are from the IT branch, all law firms have their IT team ( which sometimes has only one or two persons who are technically qualified). However, with the probability of foreign law firms soon making their way into India or at least having a local office here and most big law firms trying to grow to as big as 1000 lawyers, there is definitely a requirement for well qualified IT experts. Most of the LPOs in India have a mix of lawyers and technical people in their teams. Engineers are always required by LPOs in one capacity or the other. Be it for managing the data, techinical support or contract management etc. Last but not the least " the noble profession of teaching". There are so many law colleges which have come up all across India. Most of these colleges offer specialisation in IPRs at the graduation as well as the post graduation level. After obtaining the requisite training and qualification in Patents, you could choose to teach Patents in these colleges as a  full time or a guest lecturer. Part-Time or Freelance work options: You could do all the above as an Independent Consultant or have an arrangement to visit once in a week or as and when required.

Since you have technical knowledge, with a law degree you can specialise in the promising and growing field of patents protection. These days there are quite a few opportunities for lawyers to take work for foreign companies which outsource/offshore their legal work. Do some research on the subject, and with your engineering background and a law degree you will be one stand out in the field of law. Good luck.

Your experience as an engineer will help you, because traditionally attorneys who have not done science at high school are not allowed to be Patent Agents .You can utilise your expertise in engineering domain; if you take up Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) as it is very much alligned to your core field. Maybe in the core corporate field you can go to an Infrastructure/Projects or Engineering company where your area will be more structured but unfortunately they will not be giving you typical attorney functions in the beginning because already they will have CA/CS/LLB and HR people in place.

Patents, my friend. Patents. That's where you might hold an edge! and that's where the cash is nowadays. :)