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Hi everyone,

I'm a 2L trying to decide between firms. With how my callbacks went, I essentially have to commit to a practice area at this moment, but am undecided.

What I know is that I absolutely love Evidence. Evidence is the only blackletter law course I've ever enjoyed and I think that a practice area in big law that allowed me to do as much Evidence-work as possible would make me the happiest. I know Evidence is really just for litigation, but within litigation, are there certain specializations where attorneys do more evidence-type things? For example, I'd imagine there's very little evidence done in appellate litigation. Maybe white collar crime would have more evidence?

This might be too obvious to be helpful but you're going to have to do trial work to deal with evidence issues. Within that, every trial has evidence, so there will always be evidence questions to navigate. Some trials may have more evidence issues than others, but I'm not sure if you can break that down by practice area to say "[environmental law trials] have the most evidence issues." My guess is that criminal trials would have the most evidentiary issues, given the stakes. White collar fits that, as you suggested, but something makes me doubt that white collar evidence issues will be anything other than hearsay fights over documents.

Go into a litigation practice at a firm that actually takes cases to trial. Alternatively, if you really want to engage in evidence issues, go into a job where junior attorneys get actual courtroom experience like a local prosecutor's or public defender office that does trial work.

It's great that you love evidence but black-letter law courses are nothing like the actual practice of law, so your experience liking the evidence course probably shouldn't be a dispositive factor in your actual career choices. Someone who loved their torts class won't necessarily love working in the mass tort defense practice at a biglaw firm. It just doesn't really work that way.