Biggest areas of law in the future Forum

[Anonymous User]

In your opinion and based on your practice now, what areas of law do you think will be huge in 5-10 years? Where would you recommend a 1st year go to develop a niche?

[ExpOriental]

Future law

[Anonymous User]

Time travel law

[ExpOriental]

To give a serious answer because this is actually an interesting question, water rights is likely to become much more prominent in the future. Not saying I'd want to go into that as a niche though.

I'd say privacy but that's pretty much already here.

I don't think it'll reach nearly the same scale, and it's going to be much easier to defend, but there will inevitably be a wave of COVID litigation that will probably develop into an asbestos-like cottage industry.

[Sackboy]

At big law firms, it's pretty much always going to be commercial litigation and M&A, whether that be PE or PubCo. That's just kind of a reality of life. A lot of the more interesting and dynamic legal work gets done at midlaw shops that are OK with lower profit margin work like cannabis, traditional labor law, higher ed/k-12 work, indigenous rights, etc. These outfits actually take things to trial sometimes too, unlike biglaw firms.

Source: Me, myself, and I, jaded biglawyer

[The Lsat Airbender]

At big law firms, it's pretty much always going to be commercial litigation and M&A, whether that be PE or PubCo. That's just kind of a reality of life. A lot of the more interesting and dynamic legal work gets done at midlaw shops that are OK with lower profit margin work like cannabis, traditional labor law, higher ed/k-12 work, indigenous rights, etc. These outfits actually take things to trial sometimes too, unlike biglaw firms.

Source: Me, myself, and I, jaded biglawyer

This. Law is different from most other industries in that the "hot topic" areas of rapid development aren't always (or even often) the most profitable practices.

And there's no way to leverage into growth as an individual—you're bottlenecked by how much you, individually, can bill in a given year.

[parkslope]

In your opinion and based on your practice now, what areas of law do you think will be huge in 5-10 years? Where would you recommend a 1st year go to develop a niche?

Find the nearest turnstile and take it from there.