Choosing a Practice Area: Finding your Niche

Deciding on a practice area? It's harder than it sounds.  I was tempted to go with a general practice and offer services for a variety of areas (family, probate, criminal, traffic).  It seems like the fastest and easiest way to find and obtain clients.  It's even more tempting to do this when you're fresh out of law school.  Good idea? Wrong.

Every attorney I've talked to, every book I've read on the starting a law firm and pretty much every blog I've read on the topic all recommend practicing only one area of law and most importantly finding your niche.  By niche, I mean what it is that your law firm is known for being good at? What do people associate your firm with? What pops in your mind when you think of your firm?

So for the past few months, I've been thinking and debating what I wanted my law firm to be known for and associated with.  I considered probate law, divorces, general family law, criminal law, and even bankruptcy law.  All of these areas were based on some experience I had in the past, but mostly on the idea that I could obtain the most clients in each of area.  And then I started reading, researching and working on my website (which I'm still doing now) and ended up changing my practice area multiple times in the process.  I was beginning to get frustrated.  Why can't I find and stick with one area?

And then it finally clicked for me.  See what's important to realize is that your firm should of course be based on prior experience and an area that would be profitable, but most importantly your area of law should be one that you ENJOY practicing.  After working on my website, struggling and constantly changing my practice area, I realized that it would make everything easier to chose an area that I was interest me and I felt passionate about.

So that narrowed my options down significantly.  For me it was easy choosing criminal law.  I really enjoy criminal defense and the majority of my experience has been in criminal law (public defense).  I then decided it was best to narrow my practice area down even further to specifically DUI cases.  Don't get me wrong, I would love to take on felony drug, robbery, murder cases and more.  But right is not the time for me to open a criminal law firm and take on those type of cases.  It's important to be wise and humble enough to admit what you're ready for and what you're not ready for in your career.

With that said, I decided to make DUIs my practice area and niche because I feel comfortable and confident representing clients charged with DUIs.  For me it is as simple as that.  I have experience with criminal courts and know a few attorneys that I could talk to if I needed any guidance with a DUI case (having good mentors will be another post).  I also see DUI representation as a legal service that will always be needed and is pretty much recession proof (yay!).  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a correlation between increased DUI arrests during economic recessions.  There were over 36,000 DUI arrests in Los Angeles County alone last year... 14,000 of them being in Los Angeles City! The clients are definitely out there for the taking.

Finding my niche took a few months, tons of research, and even more inner debating.  I highly recommend attempting to write, blog, research and discuss whatever practice area you're considering for a few months before you make a final decision.  You'll find that's much easier to immerse yourself in an area, which you'll eventually have to do in your firm, when you genuinely enjoy and find the area interesting.