Anyone out there really enjoy their practice area? I’m currently a 2nd year in commercial lit and it’s been ok, not exactly riveting but can get interesting sometimes. I’ve been thinking about exploring other practice areas before it’s too late.

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I switched from product liability lit to FCPA investigations at a big firm and now broadly do investigations and/or anticorruption compliance counseling/program building in-house. Investigations have all the interesting fact finding and legal analysis you get in litigation but without all the court filings and boring rules of litigation. I made that switch from litigation to investigations as a 5th/6th year and then did investigations for 4-5 years before jumping in-house. Really worked out well because there are more (many more) opportunities in-house for investigations than if I had stuck with litigation, so I think I just got kinda lucky with how it worked out! Investigations feature large in a Healthcare Fraud & Abuse practice, FCPA, securities fraud/insider trading, and broadly any white collar practice could be a mix of litigation and investigations. These are all super interesting areas of law to learn and in these practice areas you also will learn about DOJ and other enforcement authorities expectations for corporate compliance programs and that is super valuable in-house (allows you to help build a compliance program and advise on less risky ways to go about doing business in-house).

I was able to make a switch like this because the firm I was at had a need to staff a massive investigation and asked select litigators to make the jump; but I am not sure many firms will let you make a switch just because you want to...and even as a 2nd year making a practice group switch with a lateral move isn't easy (unless there is a huge demand in firms for more bodies in that practice area). Good luck figuring it out!

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Oil & gas, but I don’t know if I’d recommend it to a more junior lawyer. It may not be around in 20 years.

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What type of like practice does it entail? Asking about both O&G and new energy. It’s the only industry I got excited about in law school, but I’m afraid it’s all just project finance and I don’t think I want that as my practice

You are young and there are many many options. Nothing wrong with exploring other areas. I enjoy my practice area. It is in the energy and energy transition field. But what do you think you might want to try?

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Yep. I do lit and bankruptcy. But, satisfaction really only took off once I started running my own matters with no or minimal supervision and felt reasonably confident that I knew what I was doing or had the tools to figure it out.

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Trusts and estates!

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Yes! I’m currently in International Trade. I’m a former commercial litigator.

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Employment

What are your goals? Do you want to stay in a law firm, move in house, work for government, etc?

Go in house !

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