National Jurist - October 2007 - (Page 33) JASON NICKLA says his graduate law degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law put him above the rest and has allowed him to work with some of the brightest people in the world. LL.M. PHOTO BY PETER BARRERAS When an Is a graduate law degree a good move for your career? Hear from three LL.M. grads on how the decision has benefited them both personally and professionally. BY M I C H E L L E W E Y E N B E RG 33 THE NATIONAL JURIST October 2007 is worth it Jason Nickla spent countless hours in a white lab coat as an undergraduate at Creighton University. His task — investigating neurotransmitter action and behavior in South American brown ghost knifefish. But even though he saw himself as a scientist, and still does, his true passion is helping scientists and inventors as a patent attorney. “Having the inventors come into your office all excited, showing you a prototype or drawing out diagrams of what their invention is — seeing that excitement really gets contagious,” he said. “So I get excited about learning the new invention and basically teaching patent law to these inventors.” Nickla is in daily contact with some of the brightest people in the world as an associate at the Beem Patent Law Firm in Chicago. His clients include Fortune 500 companies, universities in the Midwest, and independent inventors. But none of that would have been possible, he believes, without his graduate law degree — an LL.M. from Chicago-Kent College of Law in Intellectual Property Law. Nickla graduated from Creighton University School of Law in 2005, and Chicago-Kent a year later. But, at first, that fourth year of law school seemed too much to grasp. “Another year of law school, while it might sound terrible, it really isn’t,” Nickla said. “The LL.M. degree, I believe, was the only reason why [my employer] went ahead and selected me out of the list of candidates.”
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