<p>Thanks very much to everyone who has posted here at CC re: law school and a law career. </p>
<p>This will be my last post here in this section, as I will be returning to school soon for Fall semester. This info. has been invaluable to me and I will keep everyone's advice and knowledge in mind as I plan out my pre-law career. Actually, it's one of multiple career options I'm looking at, but it's one of the main three so I'll be putting in a lot of time thinking about and planning things in this area. </p>
<p>For my last question here, what are the different types of law out there and what types of salaries accompany them (roughly)? </p>
<p>If you had to rank the highest and lowest paid lawyers, which types would the be? </p>
<p>Thanks a bunch dudes! Much appreciation and bless you all!!!</p>
<p>Oh and when do people usually make a choice about which area to specialize in? First year of law school…third year? …maybe even BEFORE law school? </p>
<p>And how hard is it to switch areas once you’re working in one (and can you actually practice multiple areas at once)? Thanks!!!</p>
<p>So, I’ve been seeing a lot of acquaintances go into these firms that are like bankruptcy, foreclosure and real estate types of law and I’m wondering if these types of law areas are consdierd “inferior” types of practice areas? </p>
<p>I’ve noticed most of the people I know who went to not-so-good law schools ended up doing a lot of these types of law…likee very specirically the ones mentioned above. </p>
<p>Are these sort of “inferior” law practice areas where anyone can do them? Or are they just the same as any other? I’ve heard people joke about personal injury law too and call them “ambulance chasers.” Do people know about these areas?</p>
<p>At my alma mater, all of our courses the last two years of law school were electives, except one - legal ethics. Some people seemed to have a good idea of what they wanted to do, and specialized. I despaired of finding any area of law that I could imagine myself working in over the course of a career. I ended up studying little that had anything to do with the practice of law; I took a lot of interesting seminars (Roman Law, Chinese Law, Law in Islamic Societies, Racism and the Law, Jurisprudence, Religions Sources of American Law, and a self-designed course on the Treatment of Murder in the Anglo-American Folk Ballad. I felt free to do so as I had concluded that I really didn’t want to practice law. I planned to apply for work with advertising agencies. I started work on my portfolio by creating an ad campaign for a personal injury firm.</p>
<p>(Some law schools have virtually no electives - three years of mandatory courses.)</p>
<p>The ad campaign was a success, and the personal injury firm offered me a part-time job. I spent a couple of years with them, and then founded a two-person firm with a colleague. We did a mixture of personal injury, landlord tenant law, divorce, and immigration law.</p>
<p>After a dozen years of practice, a friend recruited me to work for a large corporation negotiating in-bound software license agreements. (I had precisely three days of experience reviewing nondisclosure agreements; I also read two books on software licensing during the interview process. That was enough to get the job.</p>
<p>A couple of years after that, I went to work in-house for a software publisher. </p>
<p>The point of this is that there is a lot of serendipity involved over the course of a long career. I know what it’s like to experience double-digit unemployment rates when looking for my first law firm job. A dozen years later, I had the good fortune to be living in Silicon Valley when the software industry was experiencing explosive growth, and had just enough of the right type of experience to take advantage of it. </p>
<p>Most people find it difficult to switch areas of legal practice, but sometimes the stars are aligned just right.</p>