If you’re on the fence about your practice area, we’ve partnered with Major, Lindsey & Africa (MLA), the world’s leading legal search firm, to identify the 10 questions to ask yourself before choosing a practice area.
Asking yourself some exploratory questions can help you narrow down your career path. After all, this significant endeavor will help define who you are in the legal community and should be one that will be the best fit for your interests, motivation, and unique personality.
Start by thinking fundamentally about who you are, what gets you going and what talents come naturally to you. Without a proper self-assessment, career satisfaction has the potential to become a gamble rather than a well-thought-out game plan. A practice area mismatch early on in your career could lead to disappointment and burnout.
While self-assessment is an ongoing process — your values, skills and interests may change over time — here’s what’s important to ask yourself so you can move forward with confidence.
Without further ado, here are the 10 questions to ask yourself before choosing a practice area. Prefer to watch rather than read? Check out this webinar replay:
1) What do I like to deal with?
Are you a people person, idea person, money/business aficionado, or are you more into dealing with concrete things like asset finance or real estate transactions?
If you are a person who likes to interact with others, Family Law, Immigration Law, Employment, Trusts & Estates or Entertainment Law might be right up your alley. If you often take a big-picture view of the world and look for opportunities to input your ideas, Antitrust, Appellate, Litigation, Intellectual Property or Tax Law might be more appealing. Securities, Bankruptcy or Corporate Law are good options if you prefer to crunch numbers.
2) Do I want to create or enable?
How you envision your role as an attorney should play a part in your choice of practice areas. Think about whether you want to be the shot-caller; general counselors are good at this. If you consider yourself a leader, you’ll likely lean toward an area of law where you can initiate legal responses. On the other hand, as a member of a team, you might be more comfortable enabling activity as part of a corporate group.
3) Do I enjoy adversarial situations?
If you have a competitive nature and/or consider yourself a very assertive negotiator, you should thrive in many practice areas within the U.S. legal system. Our adversarial approach to the law lends itself well to work in Appellate, Employment, Environmental, Family, Insurance Coverage/Defense, Product Liability or Criminal Law.
4) Do I want to be an expert or a generalist?
Do you know something about everything or a lot about a little bit? Are you a Special Teams person or do you like to play various positions — like a Jack-of-all-trades? How you answer these questions may help you decide on a career direction. If you like variety over specialization, Commercial Litigation, General Litigation, Real Estate, Criminal Law or solo practice might be areas to consider.
5) Do I prefer to analyze grey areas or have concrete answers?
Do you like to have defined starting and end points, or would you rather interpret the language of a case to arrive at a decision? Family Law, Litigation, Trusts & Estates, Cyber Law/Currency, Patent Prosecution, and Intellectual Property Law often require dealing with grey areas.
6) Who do I want to help and how?
There are many ways to help in the legal sense. Plaintiffs need assistance with class action matters. Those in distress may benefit from a Family Law, Immigration, Litigation, Criminal or Bankruptcy attorney. Corporations looking to grow their business may need Asset or Corporate Finance legal counsel. If they’re looking to up their protection from legal action, an attorney with Corporate, Litigation or Employment expertise might get a corporation’s attention.
7) Do I mind facing moral conundrums or emotionally charged situations in my practice?
Think of this question in terms of your interest in taking on a real challenging case. Do you love a “project” and being able to fix someone or something? Once righted, can you distance yourself enough from the client and/or the situation to move on? If the answer is yes, you may want to focus your career in Administrative or Corporate Law, Entertainment, Executive Compensation, Intellectual Property, Real Estate or Tax Law.
8) What relationship do I want with my client?
Do you want to be a client-facing trusted advisor, or are you more of a back-office person who works well as a legal team member? Trusted advisors have success in areas such as Appellate, Employment, Trusts & Estates, Family and Criminal Law. If you’re a down-in-the-trenches type of person, you may find your happy place in Corporate Law, Intellectual Property, Project Finance, Real Estate Transactional Law or the Tax area.
9) How important is a predictable schedule?
Some practice areas offer a more set schedule than others. Government agencies are one example. ERISA counseling, Land Use, Trusts & Estates and Tax Law also provide regularity.
10) Where can my degree take me outside of a law firm?
There is good demand for well-credentialed attorneys outside of the law office, in places like corporations, consulting firms, government agencies, academia, analyst firms and non-profits. Just remember that some expertise is more portable than others: Mergers & Acquisitions, Capital Markets, Banking, FinTech, Litigation, Real Estate and Tax Law, to name a few.
It’s also easier to move from a major market to a smaller market, rather than the other way around. What’s important is to find a sustainable career and do so early on.
Identifying your ideal area of practice will let you use your innate strengths in ways that come naturally. It will reflect who you are as an attorney and won’t cause you to do something you don’t do well. It’s all about assessing (and re-assessing periodically) and asking questions so you can go confidently into your legal career.
Looking for information about legal internships to explore future careers? Check out these tips to stand out to your future employers and what factors to consider.