<p>Now THERE's a good question..... In the modern corporate environment, no one is assured of continued employment. Companies are bought and sold, and the legal staffs can change just as the rest of the executive team can. A smart, young lawyer usually doesn't have much trouble finding employment. It gets a little harder for smart OLD lawyers! An in-house counsel develops areas of expertise, just as a lawyer in a firm does. Some companies divide the legal department up by functional areas- i.e labor, contracts, acquisitions etc. My current company just has me and a paralegal. We outsource a lot. Some companies need a bunch of patent lawyers. If you have expertise in engineering and a law degree, there is never a problem getting a job as a patent lawyer.</p>
<p>You can reduce your odds of being laid off due to a merger somewhat by trying to get a job with the dominant company in its niche. It's more likely to do the buying, and the buyer's lawyers are much more likely to keep their jobs.</p>
<p>There's only 2 ways that I know of for a lawyer to have a truly permanent job. #1 - he can start his own firm, and obviously he will never get fired because he's the boss. But that of course means that he's responsible for making sure the firm is profitable as an ongoing business, and that's no walk in the park. Or #2 - he can get tenure as a law professor, which basically mikes him unfireable, just like tenure for a professor in any field basically makes him unfireable. Other than that, lawyers can get fired or laid off for any reason or no reason at all, just like almost anybody else in the working world.</p>
<p>Disclaimer: I am only a young, ignorant kid, who is speaking not from experience but from knowledge obtained through osmosis, (internet, friends, and this website)...</p>
<p>The beauty of law is that there are soo many areas of specialties... The basic three are Criminal, Civil, and Corporate. After that it gets more complicated, because much of the law overlaps. </p>
<p>To "Thinkingoutloud"... a "Corporate" lawyer DOES NOT mean one which works for a corporation, in that he is an employee of that corporation... what you described is an "in-house counsel" (i THINK its called that, but I KNOW its not what you described)... Most corporate lawyers work for large law firms which have clients; these clients are normally corporations.</p>
<p>Corporate law deals with many many many things, but some of them are Mergers and Acquisitions, Antitrust, Tax, Intellectual Property, Contract and Commercial Disputes, Real Estate, and Corporate Litigation. Generally, within the "corporate law" community, the areas are splintered further with "Corporate-corporate" law and "Corporate-litigation" law... as you can see, it gets very complicated...</p>
<p>As said, there are tens to hundreds of areas of "corporate law," so the best way to learn more about them is to visit the websites of some large, major law firms, and browse their "Our Practices" pages. I found the following particularly helpful:</p>
<p>These are large corporate law firms, and their practice areas, all within the broad title of "Corporate" law... (again, you will see some overlap with civil and criminal):</p>
<p><a href="http://www.kirkland.com/practiceAreas/search.aspx%5B/url%5D">http://www.kirkland.com/practiceAreas/search.aspx</a>
<a href="http://www.cravath.com/Cravath.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.cravath.com/Cravath.html</a>
<a href="http://www.wlrk.com/OurPractice.cfm%5B/url%5D">http://www.wlrk.com/OurPractice.cfm</a>
<a href="http://www.skadden.com/Index.cfm?contentID=4%5B/url%5D">http://www.skadden.com/Index.cfm?contentID=4</a></p>
<p>If job security is your main concern, nothing beats becoming a federal judge. You get lifetime tenure; you can't be removed except by impeachment by the house for "high crimes and misdemeanors", and conviction in the senate (by a two-thirds vote)</p>
<p>can an immigrant be a federal judge?</p>
<p>Pick a major that is challenging but is also interesting.</p>