Will focusing your practice be good for business or will it pigeonhole you into an unhappy career? Most lawyers don’t graduate from law school with a “specialty.” Yes, there are practice area–specific law reviews and clinic opportunities for 2 and 3Ls, as well as LLMs, but everyone walks out of law school with a standard Juris Doctor degree. The issue of specialization for lawyers often comes up after graduation—and needs to be addressed quickly.
One lawyer who started his own practice after law school argues that the days of the “whatever comes in the door” type of solo firm are “long gone.” Instead, he advises new lawyers looking to hang a shingle to pick “one or two (max) areas of law and focus your practice exclusively on those select areas. If you try to do everything you won’t get good at anything.” He also points out that by trying to do everything, new lawyers look like a threat to all other lawyers in the area, thereby lowering their chances of building up solid referrals.
Specialization can become an issue even for the lawyer who’s not going solo. For example, if you’re at a bigger firm and you start working with a partner who does mostly employment defense, before you know it you’ve become a “specialist” by default. It can be tough to move around—either in your firm or outside of it—once you’ve gotten into a practice niche. After investing seven or eight years of practice in one area, it’s hard to get up to speed on something completely different. It is also unlikely that another firm will spend the time and money to get you there.
Some would advise new lawyers to let their specializations “develop organically.” In other words, identify the type of law you like and the clients you want to help, and go from there. Of course, this approach doesn’t work as well when you don’t have some sort of stable starting point from which to begin your exploration.
For me, the conversation boils down (as all things in the law somehow must) to “It depends.” I think specialization—if a new lawyer has a good idea of his or her interests and passions—can be a great way to get a new practice off the ground and start building a reputation. The danger, though, is that once you go down the path in one area, it can be hard to change course.