What is Litigation? Acting for companies or private individuals in disputes or acting to avoid a dispute. As deeply intellectual as it is strategic, few practice areas capture what it truly means to be a lawyer than litigation. Layers solve the biggest problems for huge clients at their most challenging moments.
What is it? Helping companies with the big, critical moments of change – often mergers and acquisitions.
If there were ever a practice to give you an unparalleled base for training as a lawyer, it’s corporate. This varied, multi-faceted discipline draws on almost all commercial and legal skills. Every big transaction needs commercial awareness, financial acumen, a strategic mind, and the leadership skills to bring in disciplines from tax, labor, intellectual property, or antitrust. Corporate practice naturally touches every part of a business, and a career here can spin off in a multitude of directions. Common paths for corporate generalists to specialize in include private equity and venture capital, or a more specialist regulated area of business like energy or technology.
What is it? Supporting corporations, funds and banks as either borrowers or lenders in raising finance.
Banking & Finance is a dynamic, fast-paced practice suited to big-brained attorneys that keeps global corporations growing and funds the ambitious projects of tomorrow’s businesses and government departments. The work is much more than just numerical – it demands deep commercial expertise, problem solving skills, and strategic thinking. The discipline becomes more specialized in the guise of asset finance, project finance, leverage finance, or real estate finance. In big financial centers, attorneys might even specialize in a specific financial product.
What is it? Acting for the owners of patents, trademarks and copyrights in creating and defending their intellectual assets; or for the regulators in rights challenges.
The clue to life in this practice area is in the word ‘Intellectual.’ Whether you’re coming to grips with the detail of a pharma patent or litigating with a tech giant to own a product design, IP needs highly educated, detail-oriented thinkers. The work is fascinating and, very often, ground-breaking. In IP you can expect to work with cutting-edge companies where clients are often highly technical, innovative thinkers. For this reason, IP attracts a lot of attorneys with a scientific degree or a PhD. Between patent, trademark, and copyright, the roles can be quite different – in a well established IP practice, attorneys are likely to specialize in one of the three. Patent is the larger of IP’s three main pillars, where lawyers can find themselves specializing in the subject they did a postgrad in, such as pharma or electronics.
What is it? Representing either companies or employees in critical personnel planning and disputes.
Often dealing with people at the most challenging moments in their careers, labor law is one of the few BigLaw practice areas with a clear focus on people as much as commercial organizations. Lawyers can either act for the company in managing personnel challenges – sometimes supporting wider company events such as mergers or restructurings – or representing employees as a plaintiff in taking a case to a company, often as a class action. The work in Labor & Employment is frequently litigious. Labor law also stands apart for being in need across the US – it's not strongly market dependent in the way technology, energy, or capital markets are.
What is Real Estate law? Helping companies, funds, and private investors manage the sale, purchase and leasing of their real estate assets.
Real estate is a complex transactional practice demanding deep subject matter expertise. At the BigLaw end, this is typically commercial real estate – skyscrapers, retail parks, industrial complexes – or less tangible work with real estate funds and investment portfolios. Most transactional practices focus on the large financial hubs, but real estate lawyers buck this trend by being in demand everywhere across the US.
What is Energy law? Acting for energy companies, banks, or government bodies on funding and building energy infrastructure and supply chains.
This highly specialized and regulated practice area combines corporate-commercial know-how with an ability to navigate government regulation. Energy projects are often large-scale, high-stakes, and involving multiple nations. Lawyers can specialize in the extraction of fuel, refinement, supply chains or, increasingly, renewables. Disciplines range from complex financial structures to corporate transactions to international arbitration, such as disputes between nations over drilling or pipeline construction.
What is Tax law? Helping companies and private individuals to create tax-efficient structures and control their tax liabilities.
Taxation is a highly complex, technical area of the law. To help companies trade, grow, merge, and survive within the confines of tax law takes a lawyer who is as adept at numerical problem solving as they are commercial and strategic. Private wealth lawyers, too, are expected to balance the same rigors. Tax lawyers often work as an attaché to wider transactional, corporate, and financial practices, as well as offering their own standalone tax-planning clients.
What is Technology law? Helping companies in the technology industry – and others with tech operations – with corporate and litigation work.
Technology is a heavily regulated sector that needs subject matter experts. There is heavy crossover with intellectual property, where a patent might be at the core of a company’s value or source of a major dispute. Corporate work features heavily, but can range from founding Silicon Valley startups to some of recent history’s biggest IPOs. Few sectors move faster than this or require attorneys to have their finger on the pulse more than technology. And there is no limit to the complexity a client can throw at you.
What is Bankruptcy & Restructuring law? Acting for companies or assets that are struggling to control their liabilities by creating the most viable solutions possible, or representing the banks with loans at risk of default.
For the struggling company, you might restructure the organization or balance sheet to keep it operating. If the company is unable to pay its debts, you might manage its administration and creditors. The flip side in this field is managing the debtors – typically banks – by minimizing their losses.
This area of law is demanding and high-stakes, drawing on skills in finance, corporate, and crisis management too. It’s well suited to attorneys with a broad skill set and strong analytical abilities.
Further reading: Life as a Bankruptcy Lawyer
