Our annual Student Summer Series presents first-person reflections from Berkeley Law students who are involved in an array of compelling summer work experiences. These snapshots of students’ career-enhancing work and skill development — across the legal spectrum — highlight the meaningful opportunities they gain, often in partnership with the school’s Career Development Office.
A Berkeley Center for Law & Technology Scholar, Grace Murphy ’26 entered law school having conducted extensive scientific research ranging from proteomics to cardiovascular biology. Part of her work included translating complex topics related to machine learning, toxicology, and biomarker discovery into articles intended for a general audience. Active in Berkeley Law’s Startup Law Initiative, she helps provide legal support to local startup founders facing financial barriers. At UCLA (where she graduated with a 4.0 GPA) Murphy was executive director of the school’s Hunger Project, which addresses issues concerning housing and food insecurity.
Below, she describes her summer patent litigation work at the multinational law firm Morrison Foerster — which has more than 1,000 attorneys around the world — in its flagship San Francisco office.
Coming to Berkeley Law, I knew I wanted to stay connected to science and technology. I have always been interested in understanding how the world works. I grew up watching “How It’s Made” and “Mythbusters,” and I still find myself digging into the science behind everyday things.
Prior to law school, I had spent years in the lab, studying the relationship between stress and the gut microbiome. I never intended law school to be an escape from the science realm, but rather a reentry from a new perspective.
Patent litigation has turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. During my first year, I found a love of legal research, writing, and oral advocacy. Many of the skills I had fostered in the lab were directly applicable to my experiences in my legal writing courses.
I was used to sifting through massive archives of dense documents and synthesizing pieces of evidence into a compelling narrative. Patent litigation gave me the opportunity to build on these skills with a focus on cutting-edge science, technology, and research.</p
There were several factors that made the Patent Litigation group at Morrison Foerster, also known as MoFo, the right fit. Going into the job search, I was looking for something very specific. I wanted to be able to work on life science matters, be located in my hometown of San Francisco, and learn from some of the best attorneys in the practice area. This immediately narrowed my list of potential firms.
MoFo does a ton of life science work and many of its top patent litigation partners sit in the San Francisco headquarters. Something that really stood out to me was how willing the MoFo attorneys were to get to know me early in my 1L year, prior to knowing that I would be working at their firm or that I would be pursuing patent litigation.
Now that I am in the office, people’s doors have literally always remained open — and while everyone is very busy, they are never too busy to answer a question or grab a quick coffee.
This summer, I have had the opportunity to join a team preparing for an upcoming trial. Patent cases generally go on for several years and the majority settle before there is ever a trial. Being on a trial team is a rare opportunity for a summer associate and has given me the chance to draft motions, prepare jury instructions, and research the nuances of civil procedure.
This summer has encouraged me to be more creative in the way I think about legal issues. I have always struggled with the ambiguities of law school. Coming from a science background, I was comfortable drawing logical conclusions and finding the right answers. Law school and the legal field are rarely so clear cut.
Many times, my research questions do not have set answers, and I have to weave together reasoning from several different sources. While I would of course prefer to discover a definitive yes or no to some of my questions, I have certainly gotten more comfortable with the maybes.
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