Should you specialize early and aggressively? As a general litigator (2nd year), I worry that I am not specializing. All advice for building a book of business, whether in big law or a small firm, suggests that focusing on a niche industry or practice area is the credited advice. My mentor advises building technical litigation skills and then finding a specialization around 5th year or so. But who will pay that 5th year rate to “learn” a new area of law? Cont.

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I agree with your mentor. Learning the general litigation skills early on in your career that you can use and apply as you grow and begin to specialize will give you a stronger foundation. Also, “specializing” early on May pigeon hole you into an area of law you may not like down the road. I’ve talked to plenty of partners and recruiters who say you’re most marketable in your 3-5th year of practice because you know enough that you can hit the ground running, but you’re still easily moldable and can be trained to learn a new area of law really quickly. At the end of the day, you get clients if you’re good at your job and know how to market yourself. You don’t have to be in a niche area to build a book of business, you have to be an expert in your field and good at what you do. You’re still early in your career as a 2nd year associate, during this time your goal should be to learn as much as possible and become very good at your job. You can worry about clients later. Right now, just work hard, soak up knowledge like a sponge, and keep your mind open to areas of law you may want to specialize in down the road

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It’s not a bad thing to be looking ahead!! It’s great that you want to keep your eyes open and seek out new opportunities but I definitely think your primary goal at this stage should be to build a strong foundation. Having a great grasp at those core litigation skills will make your marketable in any area and will be easily transferable when you decide what it is you want to focus your practice on! And to be honest, most of the successful lawyers I know didn’t necessarily choose their specialty early on, they worked hard and were good at what they did and an opportunity presented itself because of their success and that is what led them to practicing in the area they are in now. The better you are at your job, the more opportunities will come your way and the higher likelihood you have of something falling in to your lap that leads to your success and happiness

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Maybe. Because when you say litigation, what do you mean?
For example, I have never practised in criminal law and have stayed in civil. And most places that do family law or personal injury are their own niche. So civil litigation, to me, means everything besides criminal, family law, and personal injury.
If you mean specialize in a certain subsection of what I consider civil litigation, I agree you can wait a few more years.
If you want to do criminal, family law, or personal injury I would say start going for it now. Those three are their own beast and don't really function like other civil litigation.
If you're nervous and still want to specialize, I suggest business litigation because it often ends up touching so many other issues to a slight degree (real property, estates, tax, state regulations, insurance companies, construction issues, etc.) So you still have a specialty but overall get bits of experiance in case you really want to specialize down to somthing in particular like construction litigation.

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Thanks, I am a general business/commercial litigator who also does employment litigation.

Specializing has its place. It’s most readily recommended for two reasons. First, it’s easier to market yourself. Second, you’re better and more efficient on most of your cases. On the other hand, I think generalizing gets short shrift. First of all, as others have mentioned, it provides you better insight into what you might want to do down the road. Second, it gives you broader experience. You’ll be familiar with and identify ancillary issues for your clients more readily if you’ve worked in 10-15 areas over the years. That comes with the caveat that if you spread yourself too thin, you’re asking for trouble. But within civil litigation, you can do a range of work for a while and still benefit.

As to going solo, depending on your market, niching down may not be what clients are looking for. The advantage of a solo to most clients is the small, personal aspect of the representation. But they don’t just want a premium niche litigator. They want someone who can advise them on a range of matters. You might not do IP work, but they’d appreciate a five minute conversation on their concerns about a few product names and want some very basic insight into trademarks. You might send them to an IP lawyer if they actually need the work done. But for a basic question, at least, you’d do well to have a broader base of experience to draw from. If they’ve got business succession concerns, you might advise them more broadly before finding them someone they can go to get an estate plan and buy-sell worked out with their kids. Etc.

Again, specialization has its place and seems increasingly to be the norm. But don’t dismiss more general work out of hand. It can be harder to become broader in your practice later on if you’re too focused to early.

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The issue with this is you'll be spending however many 1-2 year stints after your 5 years of generalization trying to figure out what you actually like. I'm not sure if your plan is to have your own firm, but finding a niche sooner rather than later will be helpful not only because you'll know more, but also because it's going to be 100x easier to market yourself.

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Well I’m trying to spend these first 5 years figuring out what I like. I don’t have a clear plan. I vacillate between wanting partner (at current big law firm or mid size firm), or starting my own firm, or working in govt (CA AG’s office) or eventually becoming a state judge and then neutral. Bc my interests are so varied, I like my position as a general litigator; it keeps my options to all of those open (for now).

I do agree that having a niche is good if starting one’s own firm. It’s one reason specializing interests me.

I agree with waiting to determine your niche, especially as a trial lawyer myself. In my 11 year, I finally reached a point where I knew what cases and area of law made me happy to pursue. The key is like one associate said; to not pigeonhole yourself in. Now in my 15th year, I am able to take only the cases that get me excited and strike a chord with my morals and with my practical needs. Had I been forced to pick my area of law sooner, I would have selected entirely different areas than where I ended up finding fulfillment.

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Thank you for this. I will continue to explore!

Cont. Also, it means I might end up specializing in whatever areas of law I generally worked on in my first 5 years, which may not be great choice based on personal desire and market conditions.

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