You’re exposed to countless professional opportunities when you obtain a law degree. However, obtaining this degree often begins with the question of “Which field in law should I pursue?” While many law schools don’t expect you to be certain about your answer before you enroll, it’s a great first step to research the varying fields to ascertain which legal path will be ideal.
Different Fields Of Law
Whether or not you decide to narrow your focus through specialization or go the general route, knowing the top law fields in many academic institutions will help. It’s a great idea to explore the following field before settling on a law degree.
1. Admiralty Law
Also referred to as maritime law, admiralty law focuses on the marine trade, navigation, sailors, and any land-based maritime activity. Pursuing this law degree means you’re taught the best ways to regulate transactions and property disputes within the maritime sector.
However, it’s to be noted that admiralty law isn’t the same as the Law of the Sea, which operates within the international public law jurisdiction, generally focusing on the rights to minerals, navigation, or coastal waters. A degree in admiralty law means you’ll be primarily dealing with nautical shipping and navigation issues while settling disputes among sailors and other members of the nautical staff.
2. Criminal Law
If you’re familiar with popular television shows like Suits and House of Cards, you might know a thing or two about criminal law. Thanks to mainstream television, criminal law is one of the well-known law fields where a defense attorney represents the individual being charged with criminal activity, and the prosecutor is a lawyer representing the people.
Both the defense attorney and prosecutors have major roles. While the prosecutor is looking out for the people’s best interest by ensuring that the rule of law is always enforced, the defense attorneys also ensure that the prosecutor and police act per the constitution towards their client.
If you’re interested in this field, it helps to apply for a degree in criminology from a reputable university. A degree in criminology teaches students about the various behaviors defined as illegal and rose sanctioned under the criminal code. Students learn about the varying roles of the defense attorney and prosecutor and how well to fill either role.
3. Banking & Finance Law
The legal practice of banking and finance is termed banking and finance law. It oversees the ownership, organization, and operation of financial institutions such as banks, mortgage banks, depository institutions, and other financial service providers. The institutions to be dealt with within this law field need to provide services regulated or licensed by federal banking regulators or the state within which they operate.
The banking and finance law field aims to regulate all banking and finance institutions, ensuring that all businesses conducted between one another are done per the governing rules and regulations. As a banking and finance lawyer, you might work as an in-house counsel for specific financial institutions, banking, and finance law firms, or credit unions.
4. Entertainment Law
Thanks to the evolution of technology and its direct effect on the entertainment industry, many entertainment lawyers find themselves working in an ever-changing environment. If you like the challenge of consistent changes, this might be the best option for you.
Entertainment law is directly related to Intellectual Property law. Even though they are related, entertainment law focuses directly on the rights and royalty issues to all media created within the cinema, arts, music, athletics, or television space.
Details like compliance with rules, payments, contracts, and many more are but only the surface of what you can work on as an entertainment lawyer, which makes this field so exciting. To be a great entertainment lawyer, you’ll have to know the ins and outs of the entertainment industry, especially the sector within which you’ll be practicing. It can be publishing, television, or music. You’ll work directly with performers and their management teams or the associates adjacent to the performers.
5. Environmental & Natural Resources Law
Every human action interacts with and impacts the environment directly or indirectly. With natural resource or environmental law, you’re working to examine how these interactions occur and how best to deal with the impacts as and when they happen.
Within the environmental law sector, your primary responsibility as a lawyer will be to maintain and bolster any rules that determine the use of natural resources. In addition, you’ll be expected to make use of legislation to protect the natural world in diverse ways, defending clients in areas such as water and air quality, deforestation, mining, pollution, and many more.
The great thing about environmental law is the variety of micro sectors you can work in. You might find yourself further specializing in niches such as land use, oil drilling regulations, public health statutes, and jurisdictional water rights.
6. Family Law
The family is one place where a lot of relational problems can occur. One law field also offers lawyers several deeper specialties to pursue, like environmental and natural resources law.
Working in family law means working on varied cases that address all relational problems arising within the familial context.
While a relational problem such as divorce does fall under family law, it isn’t the only issue. Other issues you’ll be working with include domestic violence, surrogacy, adoptions, prenuptial agreements, in vitro fertilization, juvenile justice issues, etc. You might choose to specialize in a specific area or offer your services for all, for a particular family.
7. Intellectual Property Law
The field of intellectual property law is one with a major focus on the protection of all creative symbols and works developed by specific individuals or a group of people. It is a broad law field that includes areas such as entertainment law.
With intellectual property law, your sole objective is to align with a specific practice domain of your choosing, be it copyright or patent law. This is to ensure that they legally own all works of your clients and, as such, cannot be claimed by others.
Knowing about the different law fields before applying is a great way to begin your law school journey. However, you might specialize years down the line; educating yourself about the possible options makes it easier for you to make the final choice as and when the opportunity offers itself. Besides research, you can gain more help from school counselors and working lawyers for a deeper understanding.