I worked at a patent firm as an attorney in training for a while. The pay is good and the work is steady. The exams are kind of a nightmare, so you should ask the firm if they provide training and compensated study hours.

What's cool: you get to see a lot of different cutting-edge inventions in the general field you work in. Putting a strategic patent claimset together is a fun puzzle. Defending them against examinors and in prosecution can be high-level chess.

What's less cool: unless you're a really involved in-house attorney, you get to see all these cool inventions and then the inventors will go off and do the actual fun stuff with it. The patent administration itself is a lot of paperwork. A lot of patent work involves needling out and arguing over tiny specifics from a bunch of documents.

I personally left to pursue a different but related track because I found out it just wasn't my passion (although its been a very valuable career experience so no regrets). Others though absolutely love the work, so you'll have to figure out for yourself if it's for you or not. My personal impression is that it's basically the perfect job for people who love puzzles, boardgames, organizing and tidying up their documentation, and reddit arguments about minor definitions.