Marc Visnick

Graduating Year: 1997
Hometown: Portland, OR
Prior Education: Reed College
Just for Fun: I still play an Irish bouzouki with Bahttsi, a band made up in part of former L&C law students.

What I am doing with my law degree: I spend the bulk of my professional time working as a forensic software analyst contracted with Johnson-Laird, Inc., performing and testifying about comparative software analysis for copyright & trade secret litigation; performing and testifying about patent infringement and invalidity analysis for patent litigation; designing and supervising software “cleanrooms” to help demonstrate independent software development; and performing software due diligence for mergers, acquisitions & software licensing deals.

Areas of law my work involves: My work brings me into contact not only with a wide range of intellectual property-related issues for clients large and small, but also with various open source & free software-related licensing issues.

Best experience at Lewis & Clark: Meeting my wife & best friend Sybil. Engaging in close-quarter verbal jujitsu in various seminar-style classes. Editing Letter of the Law. Enjoying the fact that while my fellow L&C students were really, really smart & capable, they weren’t viciously hypercompetitive with one another. That, and a faculty that genuinely cared about their students.

Reason for electing Intellectual Property as a focus: Since I was an undergraduate I’ve been fascinated by the intersection of computers & the law (for example, as a recipient of a Jon Gilmore scholarship I attended the first Computers, Freedom & Privacy conference back in 1991). Once I got to law school, I discovered that many of the most interesting computer-related legal discussions were taking place under the Intellectual Property umbrella.

Advice for Prospective Law Students: Get the bigger picture; take classes in jurisprudence & legal history. Some of the best lawyers I’ve met thus far are the ones who understand not just what the law is, but why the law is.

My favorite course: A close tie between Copyright Law with Lydia Loren and American Legal History with Michael Blumm.

What I am most proud of: My kid Cody, giving his parents some well-deserved karmic payback by continuously peppering us with “Why…” questions, leading to periodic “wow, I never quite thought about it that way” moments on our part.