After studying electrical engineering and computer science at Harvard, Michael Joshi and his wife, Jessica Hightower (then his girlfriend), took two years off to found a business, tea.zing—a food truck selling bubble tea. A native of California, Joshi recalls discovering that bubble tea—an Asian drink made with tea and tapioca pearls popular with college students—was “everywhere” in San Francisco and L.A., but absent on the Monterey peninsula. “We designed our recipe and developed our business structure, name and logo, and went mobile,” he said. “Our truck had a full kitchen, and we’d take it to county fairs, schools and farmers’ markets.”
After two years, Joshi and Hightower sold their truck to a coffee shop, and he started law school at Vanderbilt, while she started medical school in Pennsylvania. “We went into it knowing that two years down the road, we were going to graduate school—we looked at it as a short-term project we wanted to learn from,” he said.
Joshi was already planning on a career in law when he chose to major in electrical and computer engineering as a Harvard undergraduate. However, although he considered focusing on corporate law after his experience running a business, he began to develop a keen interest in patent litigation after attending events sponsored by the Intellectual Property Society student organization. “That was where I got a sense of the wide variety of work in patent law,” he said.
While working as a summer associate with Alston & Bird in Palo Alto in 2012, he had the opportunity to work on intellectual property and patent projects and work with a partner of the firm to co-author a Law360 article on FRAND commitments, which are promises by patent holders that they will grant licenses on Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms. “Patent litigation has become incredibly interesting, and it fits really well with my background and the things I enjoy most in law school,” he said. He split summer 2013 between Alston & Bird in Menlo Park, California, and Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett in Palo Alto.
Joshi chose Vanderbilt because of its strong academic reputation and Nashville location. “I grew up in California and went to school in the Northeast,” he said. “My philosophy going in was, if I’m going to spend three years somewhere, I want it to be somewhere that would complement those experiences and add to them. I also really enjoyed Vanderbilt’s Admitted Students Program, and I’ve fallen in love with Nashville.”
Joshi, who grew up around a relative with a disability, joined the Disability Law Society to take advantage of pro bono volunteer opportunities. “It’s not the kind of law I want to practice full-time, but it was definitely the area where I want to do pro bono work when I have the opportunity.” He serves as treasurer of the Disability Law Society, the Law and Business Society and the South Asian Law Students Association.
Joshi flourished at Vanderbilt, winning the Lightfoot Franklin & White Best Brief Award, becoming a notes editor of the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law, and joining the Moot Court Travel Team. He lived on campus, where he worked as a resident adviser in a dormitory that houses sophomores and juniors.
The biggest challenge he faced was the difference between his engineering coursework and law classes. “I think I was fortunate in undergrad, because I studied engineering in a liberal arts environment,” he said. “I wrote a lot more than most engineers do. Being in class and on call wasn’t that difficult to adjust to, but law school exams are completely different, and that can seem daunting at first. But students here work together, and you get to know your professors. Vanderbilt has been a great environment for learning the law and finding areas that interest me.”
Joshi joined Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York as an associate following his graduation.