The best patent lawyers/examiners are engineers. You really do have to understand the patents and the technology to write/read patents well. However, it is really boring.
To be paid well, you'll need to pass the patent bar exam. Being a paralegal doesn't make great money compared to an engineer. There are two paths though, one is to get a law degree, the other is to be an examiner for a few years. The lost income of being an examiner (and they're mostly remote now) is much less than the cost of a law degree. You probably won't be making the huge bucks ($1k/hr) litigating without a law degree, but you can make decent money at a lot of large tech companies. You also get to stay at the front of technology... even if the patents are REALLY BORING.
There's a third path: be a patent agent. You're empowered to prosecute patents for anyone, and most IP firms employ one or more of them. No law degree needed. I was one of those, for about a year. It is not the same as either paralegal OR examiner.
Will people pay you? Well, individual inventors will nickel and dime you, and big companies want big IP law firms. So it's tough. So yeah, it's boring, but once you've mastered it, it doesn't change that much.
I'd love to talk about it some more. Is it common to go "back to school" for this kind of thing? I'm a few years past my undergrad now. Still in my 20s, though.
Feel free, my contact information is in my profile. "Back to school" in this case would, usually, mean law school, at least in the U.S. My sense is it is not uncommon for there to be a gap between undergraduate and law school. Depending on your interests and background, there are, potentially, paths for working with / around patents (some mentioned in this branch) that would not require going back to school.
