close-up of scales of justice

Liz Bush, 2012 Graduate

Engineer to Inventor to Law School Student

Mary Elizabeth "Liz" Bush already had a full-time job as a patent agent with a commute when she started thinking about attending law school.

"My bachelor's degree is in mechanical engineering, and my master's is in animal physiology and neural biology. So I actually worked as an engineer for most of my career. And after a couple of decades of that, I started writing my own patent applications as an inventor. I was with a very small company at the time. We didn't have any in-house attorneys. And the attorneys that we were using were several states away. And it turned out to be easier for me to go ahead and write the whole application rather than trying to explain the invention to them over the phone and have them write the patent application."

Her experience there led Liz to research law school options that worked best for her.

"I took a new job and the boss who was hiring me said that the company would support me if I chose to go to law school. And I explained to him that I just didn't think I could go work for him full-time and commute all the way into Los Angeles for law school. And he said, 'Well, did you consider going online?' and at that time I had never even heard of online law school."

Liz enrolled at Purdue Global Law School (formerly Concord Law School) in 2008.

A Customized Experience

Liz considers her experience at Purdue Global Law School invaluable and cherishes all the opportunities that her choice has afforded her. "Going to law school and passing the bar exam and actually becoming an attorney and not just a patent agent, that gave me some credibility with several different people.* And it gave me some more confidence in myself.""

Interaction Made Easy

Liz enjoyed the coursework and all the other unique opportunities that Purdue Global Law School offered, including the all-important interactions with her classmates. "Purdue Global Law School provides an amazing opportunity to be able to get all of the classwork that you need in order to pass the bar exam—but also be able to interact with other students."

Everything You Need to Know

Liz quickly learned that by utilizing the many resources available at Purdue Global Law School, she would be able to not only maximize her experience, but also achieve her goals. "There are many different groups/students groups within Purdue Global Law School as well as moot court opportunities. Moot court allowed me to really get the feeling of writing a real brief and arguing in front of a real judge and working with other people to make the arguments come across to the audience that I needed get them across to."

Liz graduated from Purdue Global Law School (formerly Concord Law School) in 2012 and was her class valedictorian. She subsequently passed the California State Bar exam and was sworn in as a member of the California Bar in 2013.

Today, she is in-house patent counsel for a global medical technology company in California. "Patent law is an important field and as an in-house patent attorney, I deal a lot with outside counsel. I interact with a lot of outside counsel to get all the work done. So a lot of my job is managing outside counsel making sure that they're providing what we need."