Fields of Law
Law schools encourage you to explore the many fields and specialties available to you. You don’t have to commit to a particular major or focus area while in law school. Once you complete your law school’s core curriculum, you have the freedom to take a variety of courses. If you know the field of law you want to pursue, you can select courses in that focus area.
Discover some of the many fields of law available to you. Talk to your career counselor/prelaw advisor to learn more. And Explore Real Examples of how lawyers can change the world.
- Civil Rights
- Corporate and Securities Law
- Criminal Law
- Education Law
- Employment and Labor Law
- Environmental and Natural Resources Law
- Family and Juvenile Law
- Health Law
- Immigration Law
- Intellectual Property Law
- International Law
- Real Estate Law
- Sports and Entertainment Law
- Tax Law
Civil Rights - The field of civil rights deals with the balance of governmental power and individual liberties. Full-time civil rights attorneys often work for nonprofit organizations, public interest law firms or as part of larger firms with diverse practices. Civil rights lawyers may be involved with issues including employment discrimination, equal/fair housing, education, and voting rights.
Corporate and Securities Law - Corporate lawyers help people conduct their business affairs according to the law. Their responsibilities can range from helping a small business entrepreneur start a company to handling a corporate merger or reorganization. Examples of other areas of corporate law practice include (but are not limited to) contract, intellectual property, legislative compliance, and liability matters.
Criminal Law - Criminal defense lawyers represent clients accused of crimes while prosecutors and district attorneys represent the interests of the public in the prosecution of the accused. Both types of criminal lawyers deal with fundamental issues of the law, basic rights and personal liberty.
Education Law - A school law attorney may provide advice, counsel, and representation of a school district or other educational agency. Attorneys practicing education or school law work on a variety of issues ranging from principal/teacher selection and retention process, student discipline and expulsion, tuition fraud, special education law and the development of educational policies.
Employment and Labor Law - Employment and labor law addresses the legal rights of workers and their employers. Issues might include disputes regarding wages, hours, child labor, workplace safety, sexual harassment, discrimination based upon race, gender, age, and disabilities; and unions. Attorneys practicing employment and labor law might represent an individual/group of employees, job applicants, a union, union employees, government workers, business or organization, a government agency, or interest groups.
Environmental and Natural Resources Law - Environmental lawyers may tackle legal and regulatory issues relating to air and water quality, hazardous waste practice, energy, trade regulation, water rights, public land use, marine resources, and more. They may work directly for governmental agencies or represent corporations, public interest groups, and entities concerned with protecting the environment.
Family and Juvenile Law - Family, or domestic relations, law is concerned with relationships between individuals in the context of the family. Many lawyers who practice this kind of law are members of small law firms or are solo practitioners. They can specialize in adoption, child welfare, divorce, or child custody.
Health Law - Health lawyers can represent hospitals, physician groups, health maintenance organizations (HMOs), or individual doctors, among many others. Government health lawyers can investigate fraud, deal with Medicare policy and compliance, or oversee public health policy. Health lawyers help guide their clients through intellectual property, biomedicine, and telemedicine issues. Other health lawyers specialize in bioethics and clinical ethics representing universities and other research academic centers.
Immigration Law - U.S. immigration law deals with legal issues and policies relating to the legal rights, duties, and obligations of foreign nationals, including the application processes and procedures involved with naturalization of foreign nationals who wish to become US citizens, as well as other legal issues relating to people who are refugees, people who cross U.S. borders illegally, and those who traffic or otherwise illegally transport aliens into the U.S. An immigration lawyer may choose to specialize in asylum/refugee law, business immigration law, and criminal and deportation defense.
Intellectual Property Law - Intellectual property law is concerned with the protection of inventors’ rights in their discoveries, authors’ rights in their creations, and businesses’ rights in their identifying marks. Often an intellectual property lawyer will specialize in a particular area of the law. For example, for those attorneys with a technical background, patent law is a way to combine one’s scientific and legal background into one practice. A copyright attorney counsels authors, composers, and artists on the scope of their rights in their creations and even personal identities, negotiates contracts, and litigates to enforce these rights. A trademark attorney focuses on protecting business assets such as brand names, logos and slogans. The Internet has created new intellectual property challenges that have broadened this specialty.
International Law - International law provides a range of job opportunities with national governments, international institutions, and corporations. Immigration and refugee law is increasingly important as people move across national boundaries for business, tourism, or permanent resettlement. International lawyers work for private law firms, corporations, banks, and telecommunications firms. Fluency in another language or familiarity with another culture can be a decided advantage.
Real Estate Law - Real estate lawyers help determine who owns land and the buildings on it, who has a right to possess and use land or buildings, the sale and purchase of real property, landlord and tenant issues, the development of real property, and compliance with local, state, or national regulations affecting the use of real property. An attorney practicing real estate law may draft and review contracts or focus on litigation issues, such as determining the ownership of land, seeking to allow the development of property, or trying to prevent or alter planned development.
Sports and Entertainment Law - Sports law is divided between amateur and professional sports. At the amateur or university level, sports lawyers ensure that athletes and donors are in compliance with National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules. They also work with colleges and universities that receive federal aid and are thus subject to Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender in athletic programs. At the professional level, sports lawyers address contract and antitrust issues. They may serve as agents to individual players or represent team owners.
Entertainment law generally consists of legal issues affecting television, films, recordings, live performances, and other aspects of the entertainment industry. Entertainment lawyers may assist their clients in negotiating contracts for a record deal or for appearing in a movie, may ensure that their songwriting client obtains the correct amount of royalties for the songs he or she has written, or may go to court to litigate many issues involving the entertainment industry, including disputes over ideas for movies or songs.
Tax Law – The complexity of federal, state, and local taxes have necessitated a specialty in this field of law. Change is a constant in tax law. New statutes, court decisions, and administrative rulings are issued frequently, and tax lawyers must be alert to these changes. Tax lawyers also help clients plan their financial future and help them minimize their tax liabilities.
