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Additional Posts in Law
How hard is the path from lit to GC?
Worried about potential recession and layoffs...
How do you wind down after a rough day?
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Bird law
In a similar vein: agricultural and animal law is often in high demand, especially in farming cities.
There is always a need in tax.
Second this. Tax is where it’s at.
Privacy
Come to Illinois. Plaintiffs attorneys are running wild with the BIPA actions.
IP and privacy. Also harder to break in b/c groups smaller in Big Law but employment law is in high demand in-house
Construction law. Can be cyclical though.
Smaller cases are a bear because, as A6 said, it’s all factual disputes. Bigger cases are worth it for the client and they have almost guaranteed collection with the mechanics lien priority. A lot of practitioners in our field do almost 50% transactional and many act as outside GC for the majority of their clients. You throw in representing a few owners/developers doing garden variety commercial real estate transactions and you’ve got yourself a sizable book.
Biglaw real estate, based on what I’m seeing.
@Associate4 - You are correct insofar as recessions, by definition, affect the entire market, broadly speaking. But not every recession is driven by real estate bubbles. The last one was, of course. The one before was a tech bubble. And, at any rate, a lot of real estate lawyers also do workouts.
Insolvency, international arbitration, tax.
I don't know where you are that you said insolvency. The rest of the insolvency community has been dying for the past decade.
Cannabis Law
International Trade (Customs, Export Controls, and Sanctions). Trump and tariffs have every company scrambling. Hauwei and ZTE are cautionary tales on non-compliance with export controls and sanctions.
I’d say investment funds
Patent law
A science degree is an enormous leg up in patent law, particularly so in the specialties you mentioned. It’s even required if you want to prosecute patent applications with the USPTO. Anything else Patents/IP does not require a specialized degree (though sometimes they’re still preferred), including litigation, transactions, licensing, trademark, copyright, trade secret, etc.
I believe most people you find working with patents without a background in science are found in litigation, so I’d say you could start there. If your firm has an IP Lit group you could always reach out and ask for work. Otherwise, join some IP bar associations, especially a local one, and start shaking hands. You’re not going to distinguish yourself with technical expertise without a degree in STEM, so you’ll have to make up for it in litigation skills and enthusiasm for tech. Anything at all you can do science/IP related to add to your resume you should do. I think Harvard has some free online science courses you could take just for that reason.
If you really want to break into it and don’t have the background, an LLM or a post-bac/masters degree in some STEM concentration would definitely help too! If you go the science degree route, know that there is a whole lot of job security there! Read once that less than 2% of lawyers have one. Plus, Patent prosecution was affected very little in 08, so no worries about economic downturn either.