Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> Legal Blog Watch

Legal News

: Legal Blog Watch

How Much Should You Specialize?

By Carolyn Elefant

There's an interesting opinion piece at Legal Week on the growing importance of specialization, by former law firm trainee Dominic Webb. Although the piece discusses lawyers in U.K. firms, it is equally relevant to American firms as well. Webb says that today's large commercial law firms are "rammed full of specialists." The benefits of specialists are obvious -- they are highly competent at what they do, and thus can service clients more cost effectively. But there's also a cost to specialization, and that is the impact that it has on individual lawyers themselves. The problem is that young lawyers are asked to pigeonhole themselves into narrow specializations, often without any opportunity to even experience different practice areas. Webb writes: Specialisation is inevitable, and indeed desirable, particularly at partner level. It is quite right to expect that experienced people, 20 years and more into their careers, will conclude that their knowledge, or their skill set, or indeed their client base, would be best directed towards one particular area of law. But big law firms are expecting, often demanding, that lawyers make this decision not after a 20 year career, but after a two year training contract - a training contract where...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on August 12, 2009 (boomark / email).