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Which practice areas provide steady work flow? I.e they don't rely so much on someone being sued or a company wanting to make a merger. Thanks. And please don't say "Bankruptcy because people are always going bankrupt"--I mean something that doesn't rely on the economy being good, but also something that doesn't rely on it being bad. As an example I'm thinking tax might be one answer to my question .

Employee benefits?

Good god, what was I thinking. If you want something that has steady work: tax.

However, the problem with being a tax attorney is the entire "doing tax work" thing.

Lord help us all, divorce. There are ALWAYS divorce clients available and some of the cases are surprisingly large. Nevertheless, don't do divorce unless you are capable of working with the hysterical, temporarily psychotic, and frequently vicious. Brrrr!

patent work. no matter the economy, patent filing remains steady at the least.

Family law (Divorce specifically) and Bankruptcy. There is always criminal work, but it can be tough to break in to, especially with hiring freezes.

Estate planning.

DrGuano wrote:patent work. no matter the economy, patent filing remains steady at the least.

IP SECURE

divorce law

Tax is the obvious answer. ERISA/employee benefits also fits in here (and is a major growth area, though ERISA is even more complex/finicky than tax). Any type of IP also fits here, but you're somewhat limited by what you did before law school. Products liability, medical malpractice, white collar defense, and other types of defense-side non-commercial litigation is also pretty constant.

Anonymous User wrote:Tax is the obvious answer. ERISA/employee benefits also fits in here (and is a major growth area, though ERISA is even more complex/finicky than tax). Any type of IP also fits here, but you're somewhat limited by what you did before law school. Products liability, medical malpractice, white collar defense, and other types of defense-side non-commercial litigation is also pretty constant.

Antitrust defense, and even some antitrust plaintiffs work is almost always ongoing given the huge amounts of doc review and depositions involved. Also, certain regulatory fields more than others. Banking, securities, energy (especially nuclear), government contracting/claims and transportation always seem to be doing at least steady. Telecom, education, and trade regulation seems more variable.

DCDuck wrote:Family law (Divorce specifically) and Bankruptcy. There is always criminal work, but it can be tough to break in to, especially with hiring freezes.

Bankruptcy is probably the single most cyclical practice area. This is especially true in large firms (where during good times bankruptcy associates tend to get shunted into general corporate work), but even if you're a smaller practitioner.

Anonymous User wrote:Tax is the obvious answer.

This is generally true, but much less true at a big firm. A shockingly small amount of big firm tax work is actually doing tax, or even advising companies on how to reduce tax liability. At a lot of big firms, the vast bulk of the tax practice is advising on the tax implications of mergers, joint ventures, or capital markets transactions. So that can be pretty cyclical.

Big Shrimpin wrote:

DrGuano wrote:patent work. no matter the economy, patent filing remains steady at the least.

IP SECURE

And to add to that. I just got off the phone with a fairly successful IP guy last week. If you do prosecution, you have a three month window to respond to office actions by the patent office, so you know your work decently well up to three months in advance

Regulatory work tends to be pretty stable. Even in a down economy, regulatory agencies are still churning out new rules and clients need to comply with them. Environmental, health insurance, financial regulatory, and energy should all be busy fields even if the economy remains sluggish.

Anonymous User wrote:Regulatory work tends to be pretty stable. Even in a down economy, regulatory agencies are still churning out new rules and clients need to comply with them. Environmental, health insurance, financial regulatory, and energy should all be busy fields even if the economy remains sluggish.

(guy counting on Ron/Rand Paul never being elected President)