The following are summaries of the main specialties in legal work. There are many more sub-divisions within these specialties that may be of interest to you. For example, tax law, real estate law, labor relations law, immigration law, and intellectual property law often involve various aspects of these main specialties.
Corporate law
In the world of business, there are few transactions that do not require some form of legal expertise. One vital function performed by corporate lawyers is the creation of documents that control contracts, incorporations, mergers, stock issues, bankruptcies, and partnerships. Corporate lawyers also act as advisors, helping business people conduct difficult negotiations, and making them aware of laws and regulations. For this reason, corporate lawyers must possess a deep understanding of business, as well as related fields such as banking, insurance, and politics.
Civil Litigation
In civil litigation, a lawyer’s role is to construct a winning case for his or her client, using all available means of research, preparation, and logical reasoning.
Some litigators are specialists working behind the scenes to build a client’s case, while others are “trial-lawyers” who specialize in presenting arguments before the court.
In civil disputes, individuals or corporations file lawsuits against each other, and the decisions of the court do not involve criminal penalties. Corporate work in civil litigation often involves conflicts over trademarks, contracts, agreements, copyrights, licenses, or patents. Civil litigation also includes family law, which deals primarily with divorce, child custody, and the division of assets. Another area of civil litigation is torts. Torts involve damages or injury caused through negligence.
Criminal Litigation
It is the responsibility of both private and public criminal attorneys to provide capable and rigorous defenses for those accused of committing a crime. This field of law often involves victims of crime and their families, as well as significant penalties of imprisonment or fines. In these cases, the safety and welfare of society can often place an enormous burden of responsibility on the lawyers on both sides.
June 30th, 2010 at 7:06 am
Upon reading the title of this article I was very excited. I’m currently a law student and I am always interested in learning more about various types of law. However, upon viewing this article, I quickly became very disappointed. While I’ve read enough books to have a decent understanding of many different fields of law, and I didn’t really expect this to have anything new, three specialties is terribly oversimplified. You can’t even call these main specialties. What about bankruptcy lawyers or foreclosure lawyers? Most lawyers in these two categories work for individuals, not corporations. Thus they can’t be corporate lawyers, and they generally are not considered civil litigators either. Then don’t forget there are franchise lawyers, copyright lawyers, patent lawyers (I realize you mentioned intellectual property), sports lawyers, education lawyers, aviation lawyers, maritime lawyers, and everyone’s favorite, personal injury lawyers. Believe it or not, there are numerous fields beyond those that I have listed.
I will continue to look around, but right now, I’m very disappointed.
I might be able to allow three broad categories if this article had gone into more depth about each category. Particularly, if it provided links to other articles on some of these fields. However I feel like you owe your readers an update. I understand many people like these posts to be short. That’s why I suggest adding links to other short posts about each field of law.