Finding Your Legal Career Path: Exploring Different Practice Areas
Practicing law comes with many challenges, such as passing the bar exam and earning your law degree, but choosing your career path is where it really gets hard to pick. Here are the top 5 practice areas for finding your legal career path.
This area of law is very diverse and challenging but interesting. Complex litigation involves large companies or corporations with a huge team of attorneys. To be in Complex litigation law takes a lot of skill and patience to be able to handle each case. Cases can range from contract disputes to commercial sale agreements. The average salary for a Complex litigation attorney is $118K.
Corporate law governs the rights, relations, and conduct of persons, companies, organizations, and businesses. Corporate law is perfect if you are a fast-paced worker and can easily transition from one project to the next. Many corporate law lawyers handle a good amount of cases simultaneously and can keep track of every task and case without any problems. If you are also interested in business, many of these lawyers have great in-depth knowledge and understanding of business practices. Many clients seek these traits, which makes it a great path to explore. The average salary for a corporate lawyer is $73k-$240k a year.
Tax law concerns the legal "rules" for how much the state, local, and federal governments can charge you for yearly taxes. Being in tax law gives you many opportunities to be employed. Tax lawyers can obviously work in law firms, but also account firms. They can also work for and with the federal and state government. Although you are presented with many opportunities for work, Tax attorneys must also be committed to learning new areas within the practice area and keep up with new changes in tax law. Tax law rarely focuses on mathematics skills compared to case analysis and legal technicalities. The annual salary is $88,000 to 120,000 per year.
Intellectual Property Law
Intellectual property law deals with laws to protect and enforce the rights of the creators and owners of inventions, writing, music, designs, and other works, known as "intellectual property." Intellectual property is perfect for lawyers with a passion or interest in songs, books, and designs. This practice is also perfect for lawyers with a strong sense of justice for creative and self-made works. This law practice has also increased because of a “boom” of more trademarked items. The area is also self-sustainable, with an average salary of $155,037.
Criminal law is a system of laws that punish individuals who commit crimes. As one of the most popular law practices, criminal law is crucial to everyday life as it ideally punishes those held accountable for crimes committed. This practice is perfect for those who have a passion for helping those who were damaged by the crimes committed against them. By getting a degree in Criminal Law, you stand out compared to other law practices, especially when coupled with a high-ranking university. The average salary for criminal law lawyers is $69k-$140k a year.
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