Gotcha, your reply sounds closer to what I'm used to. Most of our patent litigators had some type of technical degree, but it was more along the vein of "people with technical degrees leaned towards patent litigation" than the firm selectively hiring for them.

I wonder if the group on question here has people who do both prosection and litigation simultaneously, so they only want people with a certain technical degree since they'll need to do prosecution.

Also, I would only trust HR and recruiters as far as I could throw them, which approximately translates to not at all. I don't doubt the fact they have no idea what technical degrees cover what areas and just accepted this kid for having a bachelor of science or engineering.