From chemist to patent attorney

Lucy Padget started her career at the laboratory bench, being recruited by Zeneca Pharmaceuticals (now AstraZeneca) straight from her chemistry degree at the University of Oxford, UK. But after several years, she realised that without a PhD progress would be extremely limited. ‘I was faced with a question: do I go back and do a PhD or something else?’ says Padget. Then she saw an advert to become an in-house trainee patent attorney. Now, 16 years after qualifying, she has started her own intellectual property partnership and is seeing the profession from a different angle.