I am glad that you are taking care with this choice. Picking a patent attorney is different than some other limited tasks like buying a house. You need someone with the right legal skills and the right technical knowledge. You also need someone that you can work with as an external team member as it is an iterative process and the relationship extends for years.

I suggest that you look at some of the work done by a patent attorney. For example, some of my work can be found here. http://bit.ly/Patent_Examples

You can also do some preliminary patent searches in your general field. For tips on patent searching -- see http://bit.ly/Patent_Searching .

NOTE -- you normally cannot hire someone who writes patents in the precise field that you have improved as that person may be prevented by conflict rules from taking on a new client that would be seeking patents in the precise field of an existing client.

Another way to find a good patent attorney is to contact the advisors in the state agency in your state that is the local version of the Small Business Development Center. This is funded to help small companies bloom and grow. They often know local patent attorneys that work well with entrepreneurs. (Many patent attorneys prefer to limit their work to working with universities or large established companies. In North Carolina that agency is http://www.sbtdc.org/ .

Finally, you can seek help from a patent attorney located outside of your state if you are hiring the patent attorney to prepare and file patent applications as that task is regulated by the US government not a local state bar.

If you found this answer helpful, you may want to look at my answers to other questions about patent law are available at the bottom of my profile page at

https://lawyers.justia.com/lawyer/kevin-e-flynn-880338

Kevin E Flynn