I'm Jim Vespa, an electrical & industrial engineer turned law student. I've built AI systems at UCLA, shipped software at Accenture, and analyzed patents at UCLA's Technology Development Group. Now I'm home, studying IP law at Loyola Chicago, on the way to practicing patent law in the city I love.
Most people pick a lane. I built an interchange. I started in Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Missouri, then went deep into the modern stack with a Master's in Electrical Engineering from UCLA: VLSI design, trustworthy AI, neural networks, mobile networks, cloud systems.
Along the way I noticed the most interesting question was never just "does it work?" It was "who owns it, how do you protect it, and how do you prove it?" That question took me to UCLA's Technology Development Group, where I analyze invention disclosures and provisional patent applications, draft the non-confidential descriptions that market university inventions to industry, and help build an AI agent that automates that drafting.
Now I've brought it home to Illinois. Raised in Peoria and based in Chicago, I'm a JD candidate at Loyola University Chicago, where I was 1 of 2 students awarded the Intellectual Property Fellowship. I'm training to become the patent attorney who can sit with inventors as a peer, translate their work into enforceable claims, and stand behind those claims in prosecution or litigation. Chicago is the city where I intend to build that career.
A patent attorney is only as good as their command of the underlying art. Select a domain to see where my hands-on depth comes from — and how it maps to real patent practice.
The Westwood Guarantee — chips, AI, and NASA-adjacent research. Click any card: flagships include embedded simulations, the actual research video, and the full papers.
Industrial & systems engineering in the field — real clients, real factory floors, and the full reports embedded in every case study.
Throughout the journey.
Studying at the heart of Chicago's IP corridor. Focus: patent prosecution & litigation, technology law, and the doctrines that decide what innovation is worth.
Graduate depth across the modern patent landscape — chips, networks, and AI — plus IP Law taken inside an engineering program.
Systems thinking with software chops: minors in Information Technology and Web & Mobile App Development.
Every step has been chosen to compound into one profession: patent law, practiced by someone who has actually built the technology in the claims.
Systems, manufacturing, software minors
Chips, AI, networks — the modern art units
Finishing patent analysis, starting at Loyola
USPTO registration; Chicago BigLaw/IP Boutique
Prosecution / litigation
"The best patent lawyers aren't lawyers who learned technology.
They're engineers who learned to argue."
Recruiting for IP and patent practice groups or research collaboration — my inbox is open.
