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Employment and Specialization in Law Practice

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published December 19, 2005

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One of the causes of specialization—as noted by Professor Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., of the University of Pennsylvania Law School—is the exponential growth of information and evolution of techniques in the law profession.1 As such, aside from the major law firms, the majority of firms will specialize in one or two fields of law, while occasionally taking on an unrelated case. For law students, this affects how law is taught at law schools.

One effect of specialization on law schools, argued more than 10 years ago by Professor George Priest of Yale Law School, is the idea that law schools will eventually become structured like universities.2 At a university, disciplines such as political science, English, and biology are separate departments pursuing their own projects. Similarly, according to Priest, the trend will be that law school faculty, and therefore the students, will be specializing in areas of law on an increasingly narrower scope.3 In some ways, Priest is right. For example, specialty journals such as a journal of law and technology are present alongside the more general law review. Additionally, law school clinics have been set up in specific areas of law, such as criminal and family law.


The specialization at law schools is a good thing because the depth of knowledge each student can pursue in each area of law is far greater than before. However, it may also potentially limit the students' abilities to obtain employment. A student with strong training in family law will have very little trouble finding a position at a firm that specializes in family law. But what if the student finds he/she dislikes family law and enjoys intellectual property or medical malpractice? That student will have a more difficult time because, aside from the general skills and the basic knowledge of the other fields that one gains in law school, he/she will have no experience outside the field he/she was trained in.

While it is arguable that law firms expect recent graduates to have little or no experience, and therefore will give everyone equal opportunity, specialization has affected the economic aspect of law firms. Like all businesses, law firms are motivated by profit. This means that the firms will need to provide the best work product possible. Because the quality of the law profession is defined by the quality of service it provides, the less time it takes to train a new associate, the faster the law firm can increase its output. With specialization present, the economic aspect becomes what Hazard referred to as "an economic 'rat race'…to acquire the similar specialized knowledge and adopt similar to better specialized techniques."4 Thus, law firms are more likely to favor the law students who already have an in-depth understanding of the areas of law the firm specializes in.

Although the ideas outlined so far are theoretically correct, in practice, there are always ways to get around the rigidity of specialization at firms. This is done by showing the potential employer that one can quickly adapt. For recent graduates, concrete evidence like win ratio and total number of cases are lacking due to inexperience. As for experienced attorneys, they do not have the same problem as recent graduates because they have been practicing for several years and can demonstrate that they can quickly pick up new fields of law through their win ratio or through the number of cases they have handled. Nevertheless, accomplishments and practical experience will still help recent graduates obtain employment because they demonstrate competency in the general skills needed for law practice. Very few recent graduates can claim to have the experience of a first- or second-year associate. As such, even though firms prefer experienced candidates, it would be self-defeating for firms to always wait for experienced candidates. Therefore, the key to obtaining employment in fields other than the area of law that one has had the most instruction in is a matter of marketing one's skills as adaptable to those areas.



1 Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr. "Practice" in Law and Other Professions, 39 Ariz. L. Rev. 387, 390 (1997).
2 Judge Harry T. Edwards, The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education and the Legal Profession, 91 Mich. L. Rev. 34, 40 (1992).
3 Id.
4 Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr. "Practice" in Law and Other Professions, 39 Ariz. L. Rev. at 390.
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published December 19, 2005

( 6 votes, average: 4.6 out of 5)
What do you think about this article? Rate it using the stars above and let us know what you think in the comments below.

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