Posted by Sponsored Post Posted on 20 March 2020

Legal Practice Areas – How to Choose Yours?

The hardest decision that a future attorney must take is choosing their legal practice area. Most of them go into law school with a strong desire to be an attorney but without knowing what type of attorney exactly.

Moreover, given the many legal practice areas out there, it’s important to figure out your favorite practice area early on so that you can plan your future career accordingly.

It would be best if you did so because there are more than enough attorneys who regret their decision of choosing the corporate path instead of becoming an injury attorney, for example. However, since we know this is not an easy thing to do, here’s some information that will help you choose your legal practice area!

The Three Main Types

To figure out which legal practice area you want to make a career in, we’ll take a look at the three main types of attorneys and what they do on a daily basis.

  • Litigation Attorneys

Such attorneys are characterized by advocacy, the ability to develop strategies, enjoyment in research and writing, as well as by analytical thinking. You would enjoy being a litigator if you enjoyed the civil procedure or legal research class in your first year as a law student.

Then, litigators may be trial attorneys, spending most of their career in the court of law, or the litigator of a big farm that will do his/ her best to settle their firm’s cases out of court. 

  • Transactional/Corporate Attorneys

These attorneys come with strong attention to detail and have a special interest in commercial matters. They also enjoy writing contracts and closing deals for the company they work for.

On top of that, those that may enjoy being corporate attorneys also enjoyed the class covering the predictability and structure of drafting contracts while studying law. 

  • Regulatory Attorneys

Regulatory attorneys enjoy administrative hearings, providing advice in such matters, regulatory schemes, and statutory interpretation.

As such an attorney, you may end up working in communications, banking, antitrust, energy sector, food and drug law, employee benefits, and so on. 

It is also worth mentioning that regulatory law is practiced on both state and federal levels – so an attorney may work in Washington, D.C., for one of the federal agencies or the state of their choice. 

Knowing Yourself

Naturally, to make the right choice, you must know yourself and what you like the most about the law – consider supply and demand only after doing so.

This is because attorneys will always be in demand, no matter their practice area. On the other hand, you wouldn’t want to get bored while practicing law – this is the most important thing. If you enjoy what you do, then you won’t be bothered by anything else!

The Bottom Line

Our last advice for you is to choose your legal practice area early and commit to it. You should research all the areas and find the one that you really like – and then, naturally, stick to it while you study and do your best for your dreams to come true.

Also, on the other hand, don’t get stuck to a particular area if you know you may not be that good at it once you start your legal practice.


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