White collar crime lit: How much do you actually LITIGATE? Forum

[A. Nony Mouse]

This is just interesting, but wouldn't any of those be split into transaction and litigation too?

Like real estate - anybody making real estate contracts would be transactional, anyone dealing with real estate litigation (eviction maybe or foreclosures?) would be litigation. Of course, you can probably be both and in some of those fields there's a lot of overlap.

Kind of sort of maybe. There's also a compliance element to a lot of it that has nothing to do with deals or litigation (think tax-you're paying that shit every year even if you're not making deals or getting sued). Real estate might be doing deals but you also might be dealing with compliance with zoning ordinances or fire codes or some shit. Drafting a will or setting up a trust isn't really deal work or lit, though I guess it's somewhat closer to the orbit of deal work.

Nah, I think the litigation/transactional divide is correct. There's nothing that says deals are the only transactions. I lump compliance/estates/zoning etc. all under transactional. Another way to put it would be court-centered vs. non-court-centered, but that's awkward as fuck.

But regardless, criminal defense attorneys are still litigators. There's no "fanciness" requirement.

[BlendedUnicorn]

This is just interesting, but wouldn't any of those be split into transaction and litigation too?

Like real estate - anybody making real estate contracts would be transactional, anyone dealing with real estate litigation (eviction maybe or foreclosures?) would be litigation. Of course, you can probably be both and in some of those fields there's a lot of overlap.

Kind of sort of maybe. There's also a compliance element to a lot of it that has nothing to do with deals or litigation (think tax-you're paying that shit every year even if you're not making deals or getting sued). Real estate might be doing deals but you also might be dealing with compliance with zoning ordinances or fire codes or some shit. Drafting a will or setting up a trust isn't really deal work or lit, though I guess it's somewhat closer to the orbit of deal work.

Nah, I think the litigation/transactional divide is correct. There's nothing that says deals are the only transactions. I lump compliance/estates/zoning etc. all under transactional. Another way to put it would be court-centered vs. non-court-centered, but that's awkward as fuck.

But regardless, criminal defense attorneys are still litigators. There's no "fanciness" requirement.

How would you group antitrust, bankruptcy, or tax lawyers who split time with deals and court? And I know that some are antitrust lit or antitrust deals, but some aren't.

[tomwatts]

How would you group antitrust, bankruptcy, or tax lawyers who split time with deals and court? And I know that some are antitrust lit or antitrust deals, but some aren't.

They spend some of their time litigating and some of their time not litigating. Nothing says you have to be 100% litigation or 100% transactional. Many lawyers do a good deal of both. (In addition to the types you named, union lawyers come to mind as people who do both litigation and transactional work.)

Each time I look at this topic, I think of ADR. If you primarily do arbitration (for some reason), I think of you as still a litigator even though a lot of dictionary definitions of "litigation" refer to courts specifically. It's still adversarial. Even mediation, which is geared toward a settlement (which is a deal, at the end of the day), is still adversarial. So I think that's really the defining feature. Drafting a will is not adversarial; thus, even if doing wills is not deal work, it's close enough to it to still be in the transactional realm of practice.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Totally agree with the above. And adversarial is a much better word for what I was getting at with my court/non-court distinction. But there's nothing that says you can only do one of the two.