Do corporate lawyers matter? Evidence from patents
研究发现专利律师的法律能力每提高一个标准差，专利市场价值上升0.04%、引用量增加3%，且不受律师经验影响，通过新专利办公室设立等外生冲击验证了因果关系。
Patent attorneys are responsible for obtaining patents that bring the highest expected profits for their corporate clients. We investigate the role of patent attorney capability in determining the value of corporate patents. We find that a one standard deviation increase in legal expertise leads to a 0.04% rise in patents' market valuation and a 3% increase in citations. This finding holds irrespective of the number of patents obtained by patent attorneys to date (process experience). To establish causality, we exploit a novel shock: the opening of new regional patent offices in the US; and changes in a firm's patent attorney. Overall, we find that capable patent attorneys matter as they increase both the economic and technological value of corporate patents.