[1] In the spring of 1848, in the family home, Patiția met Avram Iancu, who had arrived to discuss participation by the moți in the upcoming Blaj Assembly.
The same year, he was hired as a magistrate's assistant in Alba Iulia; while there, Patiția led a strident effort to maintain Romanian as one of the office's languages, which drew the ire of the mayor, a Magyarized Slovak.
These unfavorable conditions, coupled with the Magyarization efforts undertaken by the Kálmán Tisza government beginning in 1875, prompted Patiția to enter private practice in 1878.
[3] The couple had two sons (later a military officer and a jurist, respectively) and a daughter;[4] the latter married Zaharia Munteanu, himself a lawyer and participant in the national movement of Romania's Transylvanians.
[4] In 1887, he founded a public library in the building of Alba Iulia's Orthodox school; to Patiția's disappointment, it was later shut down by Nicolae Ivan.
[3] Determined to mark the February 1885 centenary since Horea, Cloșca and Crișan died, Patiția paid a hotel band to play Romanian patriotic songs one evening.
[3] Patiția took part in the Transylvanian Memorandum movement and was a strong supporter of sending the document immediately to Emperor Francis Joseph.
[5] In mid-1892, he accompanied a delegation to Vienna with the purpose of submitting the petition to the emperor, who refused to receive it; Patiția's writing on the episode is an important first-hand account.
[3][5] After being released, Patiția continued as a lawyer and defender of those charged with "agitation",[5] including the founders of a choir that performed Romanian patriotic music.
A supporter of PNR president Ioan Rațiu and of the outspoken newspaper Tribuna, he criticized the Magyarization policy of the Dezső Bánffy government.