How To Choose a Focus as a Lawyer

Being a lawyer is one of the most rewarding ways to make a living. Not only do you get paid handsomely, but you also get to make a real difference in people’s lives on a daily basis. One of the things that makes law so attractive as a career choice is the broad range of specialties you can choose to focus on.

If you want to help sort out differences between spouses, inheritance discrepancies or help couples legalize their adoption of a child, you can branch out into family law. Do you want to help bring bad guys to book? Then you can go into criminal law with the goal of becoming a state prosecutor or a district attorney.

It is wise to go into your law studies knowing which area you will eventually specialize in. if you have the capacity for it, you can venture into more than one specialty, depending on your career goals.

Breaking Down Your Options

These are the major categories legal specialties are broken down into:

• Real Estate Law
• Family Law
• Intellectual Property Law
• Health Law
• Criminal Law
• Corporate Law
• Tax Law
• Education Law
• Civil Rights
• Animal Law
• Employment and Labor Law
• Environmental and Natural Resources Law
• International and Immigration Law

Before you can practice in any of the above specialties, there are specific requirements you need to satisfy. The first is to acquire a law degree from a reputable law school. But before you can be admitted to study at any such law school, you need to have sat for and passed an LSAT (Law School Admission Test).

Obtaining a law degree will require you to undertake a minimum of three years of full-time study. In the course of the three years, you will receive training on constitutional law, legal writing and the drafting of contracts. Before you complete your course, you will be required to do additional work in whichever area you have chosen to specialize in.

After completing your law degree, you will still have one more step to take before becoming a practicing lawyer; being admitted to the bar. This will require you to sit and pass the bar exam for whichever state you will practice. The bar exam will ordinarily consist of the Multistate Bar Examination and an exam testing your knowledge of the laws of that particular state.

Passing the bar exam is not the end of studying for practicing lawyers. You need to keep abreast with changes in legislation pertaining to your jurisdiction and area of expertise.

Choosing a Focus

While money should not be the sole motivating factor in your choice of legal specialty, it is an important consideration. If you hope to be on the higher end of the legal wage scale, becoming a medical lawyer is a good idea. In this specialty, you stand to make close to $140,000 annually.

Intellectual property and corporate lawyers make almost much while defending their clients’ trademarks, patents, and copyrights. It’s worth noting that pay structures for different lawyers are not fixed. Besides your specialty, your work experience, the law firm you work for, your legal education background and how good you are at what you do will determine how much you get paid.

To ensure you succeed in all the academic requirements about your desired area of specialty, you need to observe the following:

Prepare for Tests 

You need to take care of the first of these is your LSAT test prep, as this is your ticket into law school. Besides attending live or online classes, you need to develop a study plan that works best for you. You also need to take as many practice tests as possible that simulate the actual test conditions.

Join a Study Group 

One of the fastest ways to learn is by joining and contributing to study groups. It is a proven fact that the more you explain a concept to others, the firmer a grasp you gain on it. And hearing your fellow learner break down a concept can make it more digestible than when it’s heard in a lecture hall.

Learn From Mistakes 

This is the whole idea behind taking practice tests. Get the kinks out before you do it for the real deal.

Make Use of Tutoring Services

Numerous offline and online resources are available to help you improve your grasp of laws and past cases.

Take a Prep Course 

A prep course will give you access to one-on-one tutelage with an expert who will help you learn at your own pace. These courses will have many practice questions to confirm how well you have understood the content.

All the Possibilities 

No matter which law focus you choose to pursue, you can rest assured there is no wrong choice. Working in the legal field offers a host of gratifying perks and they are associated with each specialty. Another assuring fact to keep in mind is that one can always switch to