Let this be a lesson to current and future Southwestern University students: when a respected professor offers sage career advice, do not laugh it off! The thought occurred to Lee Ann Lockridge recently as she thought back to a decade-old conversation with Professor of Chemistry Fred Hilgeman.

Lockridge, who came to Southwestern from Brownwood as a National Merit Scholar, recalls, "After hearing I was considering law school, Dr. Hilgeman told me that I should go into patent law, but at the time I was convinced I would use a law degree to become a corporate savior of the environment." Now in her fifth year as an intellectual property attorney for Thompson & Knight, L.L.P in Dallas, it seems that Hilgeman's suggestion wasn't so far-fetched.

She claims to have arrived at her position by "accident of circumstance." After earning Phi Beta Kappa honors from Southwestern, she considered a variety of environmental graduate programs before choosing Duke University, which had a joint-degree program an environmentally focused master's program with a law degree. Although she enjoyed law school, she quickly determined that environmental law was not what she'd imagined.

Figuring that leaving law school without a J.D. would be a waste, she took a few intellectual property classes and found that she was truly interested in the subject. She went on to graduate magna cum laude and Order of the Coif, while serving as associate editor of "Law and Contemporary Problems" and contributions editor of "Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum." She also headed the community service program of the Duke Bar Association and organized the school's annual day of service that benefited 20 different projects in the city of Durham.

She worked for one year as a clerk in the U.S. Court of Criminal Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Kentucky before moving to Dallas. She now handles transactional work dealing with intellectual property, including patents, copyrights, software licenses and more. "My personality is more suited for this type of work rather than litigation. I work with counsel to come to agreements that are beneficial for both parties, so it's not adversarial or confrontational."

Once per month, she volunteers as a tenant counselor for the Dallas Housing Crisis Center. She says, "It is my one real pro-bono outlet since I'm not a litigator. Most other pro-bono work involves appearing in court." She also dedicates time to the Alzheimer's Junior Women's Association, an under-40 group that raises money and awareness while supporting the Dallas Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association. Lockridge's grandmother suffered from the disease for 15 years before passing away in 1996.

She is one year into her marriage with Eric Lockridge, a commercial litigator whom she met through a friend at her firm. They have a dog, Kate, that she fondly describes as "part mutt, part wolf," adopted from a Kentucky shelter. Although she has less time for her hobbies than she would prefer, Lockridge has recently developed interests in photography and oil painting.

"I also spend time trying to recruit the partners' children to go to Southwestern. I took so much away from my time there, especially the friends I made and the wonderful professors who were there for me in and out of the classroom."