Practice areas

A practice area is a label for three things that travel together: a body of law, the procedure that carries it, and the kind of trouble that brings a client through the door. Change one and you change all three. A car crash brings tort law, a state trial court, and an insurance adjuster working from a claims file. A deportation case brings the Immigration and Nationality Act, an administrative court inside the Department of Justice, and a government attorney across the table. The two jobs share a license and very little else.

The license itself is general. No state issues a permit that says personal injury or tax. A lawyer admitted in Ohio may file a wrongful death suit on Monday and draft a shareholders' agreement on Tuesday. What the rules impose is a floor. The ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct require competence, defined as the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation, and nearly every state has adopted that language. A lawyer may take an unfamiliar matter if they can become competent without unreasonable delay or expense, usually by associating with someone who already knows the field. The rule allows learning. It does not promise that you want to be the case they learn on.

The differences between areas begin with the forum. A personal injury claim is filed in a state trial court. A bankruptcy petition can only be filed in a federal bankruptcy court, because no state court has the power to discharge debts. An immigration case is heard by an immigration judge in a system run by the executive branch, not by an Article III judge. An employment discrimination claim usually cannot reach court at all until a charge has been filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or a matching state agency, and that charge carries its own deadline: 180 days from the discriminatory act, extended to 300 days where a state or local agency enforces a law against the same conduct. A lawyer who does not know the step exists will let the claim expire while drafting a complaint that can never be filed.

Deadlines behave the same way. The limitation period for a personal injury claim is commonly two or three years, though it runs shorter in a few states and longer in others. Written contract claims usually get more time. A claim against a city or a state agency often carries a written notice requirement measured in months, not years, and missing it ends the case while the ordinary statute still has years left on it. Every one of these clocks belongs to a practice area, and knowing which one applies is the first thing experience buys.

The other side changes too, and so does the proof. In an injury case the opponent is an adjuster with a reserve figure and an internal authority limit, and the file runs on medical records, treating physicians, and accident reconstruction. In a criminal case it is a prosecutor with a caseload and an office policy on plea offers. In a merger it is opposing counsel billing by the hour with an incentive to argue, and the file runs on cap tables, board minutes, and forensic accountants. Those expert relationships take years to build, and a firm that has never hired that kind of expert will pay more for a worse one.

This is why an index of practice areas is a tree rather than a list, with root categories at the top and the real work one level down. Personal injury is a root. Car accidents, truck accidents, medical malpractice, premises liability, and wrongful death are children, and they are not interchangeable. A firm that handles rear-end collisions every month may never have taken a birth injury case to a verdict. Ask at the child level, because that is where competence is either present or absent.

The tree also converts a problem into a search. Clients arrive with facts, not doctrine. My employer fired me a week after I complained about unpaid overtime is a set of facts. It maps to employment law, and inside employment law it splits into a retaliation claim and a wage and hour claim, which run on different statutes and different deadlines.

One caution about the labels themselves. They are self-described. Nothing prevents a firm from listing twelve practice areas on a website when it really works in two. That is the gap this directory tries to close. Practice area tags come from the firm. The verification marks do not: they are earned with documents and an editor's review, never bought with a plan tier, and each one carries the date it was last checked.

None of this means a generalist is a bad lawyer. Small towns run on generalists, and a competent one will tell you when a matter sits outside their range and hand it to someone who does that work daily. The failure mode is the opposite: the lawyer who takes the case anyway, bills for the education, and misses the step a practitioner in the field would have taken on day one.

The families below cover most of what walks into a law office. The names shift a little from state to state, but the work behind them is stable, and so is the event that starts it.

Personal injury. The trigger is physical harm caused by someone else's carelessness: a collision, a fall on a wet floor, a defective product, a surgery that went wrong. The work is proving that a duty existed, that it was breached, that the breach caused the harm, and what the harm is worth. Most of it is negotiation with an insurer, and most cases settle. The claim runs against an insurance policy far more often than against a person.

Criminal defense. The trigger is an arrest, a charge, or a detective who wants to talk. The work starts before charges are filed and runs through arraignment, bail, discovery, suppression motions, plea negotiation, and, in a small share of cases, trial. Timing matters more here than anywhere else: the hours after an arrest, and the decision to say nothing, shape everything that follows. Public defenders carry the majority of felony representations in this country.

Family law. Divorce, custody, child support, spousal support, paternity, adoption, protective orders. The trigger is a household ending or a parent losing access to a child. Property division follows state rules that split roughly into community property and equitable distribution, and the difference changes the arithmetic. Custody turns on a best interests standard that gives judges wide discretion, which is why knowing the particular bench matters as much as knowing the statute.

Employment law. Firing, harassment, discrimination, retaliation, unpaid wages, misclassification, non-compete agreements, severance. Some claims require an administrative charge before any lawsuit, and that deadline is short. Wage claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act carry a two year limitation period, extended to three years for a willful violation. Employees and employers hire different firms, and a practice that defends employers will not take your case against one.

Immigration. Visas, green cards, naturalization, asylum, removal defense, employment sponsorship. The trigger ranges from a job offer to a Notice to Appear. Almost none of this happens in an ordinary court. It moves through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the immigration courts of the Executive Office for Immigration Review. Policy shifts with administrations, and a filing prepared under last year's guidance can be rejected under this year's.

Business and corporate law. Forming an entity, drafting the operating agreement that decides what happens when the founders stop agreeing, contracts, financing, buying or selling a company, and the litigation that follows when a deal breaks. Much of the value here is preventive. The clause nobody wanted to negotiate at formation is the clause that decides the dispute five years later.

Estate planning and probate. Wills, trusts, powers of attorney, health care directives, and the court process that moves property after a death. The trigger is a diagnosis, a business sale, or a funeral. Probate is a state court proceeding with local rules and local forms, and the cost of getting the documents wrong is paid by people who can no longer ask you what you meant.

Real estate. Purchases and sales, title defects, easements, landlord and tenant disputes, evictions, zoning and land use, construction defects, foreclosure defense. Some states require a lawyer at a residential closing and others do not. The trigger is a transaction or a neighbor, and the paper record usually decides the answer.

Consumer protection. Debt collection abuse, credit report errors, deceptive sales practices, auto fraud, lemon law claims, predatory lending. The trigger is often a small dollar loss that no lawyer could take on an hourly basis. Federal statutes solve that by shifting fees to the defendant when the consumer wins, which is why a lawyer will litigate a case worth a few thousand dollars. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and state agencies take complaints in parallel.

Civil rights. Police misconduct and excessive force, unlawful arrest, prison conditions, First Amendment claims, voting rights, disability access, discrimination in housing and schools. The main federal vehicle against a state or local official is 42 U.S.C. 1983, and qualified immunity is the doctrine that ends many of these cases before a jury ever sees them. Fees shift to a prevailing plaintiff under 42 U.S.C. 1988.

Tax. Audits, appeals, collection actions, liens and levies, offers in compromise, criminal tax investigations, and the planning that avoids all of it. The trigger is a letter from the IRS or a state revenue department. Tax has its own court, the United States Tax Court, and a deadline structure that punishes silence.

Three more come up constantly. Bankruptcy is exclusively federal, and the choice between a Chapter 7 liquidation and a Chapter 13 repayment plan turns on income, assets, and what you are trying to keep. Workers' compensation pays medical care and partial wage replacement after a workplace injury and, in exchange, usually bars suing the employer. Intellectual property covers patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets, and patent prosecution requires a separate registration with the Patent and Trademark Office.

Two areas can own the same event, and often do. That overlap gets its own treatment below.

Fee structure follows the practice area more closely than it follows the lawyer, and the reason is economic. A case with a pot of money at the end can be financed out of that pot. A case with no pot has to be paid for as it goes.

Contingency. The lawyer takes a percentage of what they recover and nothing if they recover nothing. This is the standard arrangement in personal injury, and it is common in wrongful death, product liability, and mass tort claims. The percentage commonly runs from one third, about 33 percent, when a case settles before a lawsuit is filed, up to 40 percent once suit is filed or the case reaches trial. The number is negotiable, and worth negotiating on a strong case with clean liability.

Case costs are not the fee. Filing fees, deposition transcripts, medical records, and expert witnesses are expenses, and in most injury cases the firm advances them and takes them back out of the settlement. The question that changes your check is whether the percentage is calculated before or after those costs come out. Take a 100,000 dollar settlement with a one third fee and 10,000 dollars of costs. If the fee comes off the gross first, the lawyer takes 33,333, costs take 10,000, and you keep 56,667. If costs come off first and the percentage applies to the remaining 90,000, the fee is 30,000 and you keep 60,000. Same lawyer, same settlement, 3,333 dollars of difference. Ask which method the agreement uses.

Contingency is not allowed everywhere. The Model Rules prohibit a contingent fee for defending a criminal case, and for a domestic relations matter where the fee depends on securing a divorce or on the amount of alimony or support. Most states require a contingency agreement to be in writing, signed by the client, and explicit about how expenses are handled. If you never received a signed copy, ask for one.

Some contingency rates are set by law rather than by bargaining. Workers' compensation fees are capped in most states and often require a judge's approval. In a Social Security disability claim, the representative's fee is generally 25 percent of past due benefits up to a dollar ceiling that the Social Security Administration sets, periodically raises, and approves before the fee is paid.

Hourly. The default for business work, employment defense, contested family cases, commercial litigation, and much criminal defense above the flat fee range. Rates vary by city and seniority, but the total matters more than the rate. Ask three things. What is the smallest increment billed, since six minutes is standard and fifteen is expensive? Who actually does the work, and at what rate, because a paralegal reviewing documents should not bill like a partner? Can you get a written estimate of the range for each phase? Then ask for monthly invoices with task-level detail.

Retainer. In most cases this is an advance deposit against hourly fees. It goes into a client trust account, the firm bills against it, and you replenish it when it runs low. Money that has not been earned is still yours, and a lawyer who is discharged has to return the unearned part. A rarer arrangement, the availability retainer, pays a lawyer to be available and can be earned on receipt. The two are expensive to confuse, so ask in writing which one you are signing.

Flat fee. One price for a defined piece of work. It is the norm for a will and trust package, a business formation, a residential closing, an uncontested divorce, most immigration petitions, and misdemeanor defense. Predictability is the value; scope is the risk. Find out what is excluded before you sign: an appeal, a hearing, a response to a request for evidence, or a second round of negotiation. A flat fee that covers half the matter is not a flat fee.

Statutory fee shifting. Congress and the states have written fee provisions into statutes where the harm is real but the damages are too small to pay a lawyer out of the recovery. Under 42 U.S.C. 1988, a prevailing plaintiff in a civil rights case can recover attorney's fees from the defendant. The Fair Labor Standards Act directs the court to award fees to an employee who wins a wage claim. Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and most state consumer protection statutes carry similar provisions. The effect is that a claim worth 2,000 dollars can still be worth filing, because the lawyer is paid by the losing defendant, not out of your recovery. Ask whether your claim carries a fee provision. It changes who will take your call.

Hybrids exist and are worth asking about: a reduced hourly rate plus a smaller percentage of the recovery, or a flat fee per phase with an hourly rate for anything outside it. A free consultation is a sales meeting, not advice. It is standard in contingency practices and rare in business practices, where the first hour is billed. Get the agreement in writing, read the costs paragraph twice, and keep your copy.

Any lawyer can put any practice area on a website. Separating the ones who do the work from the ones who bought the keyword takes about twenty minutes and five checks, and every one of them can be run from a computer before you pick up the phone.

Board certification is the strongest signal available, and it is uncommon. Roughly a dozen state bars run their own certification programs, and the two best known belong to Texas and Florida. Both work the same way. A lawyer applies in a defined area, shows several years in practice and a substantial share of their work in that area, submits references from lawyers and judges who have seen them work, meets a continuing education requirement, holds a clean disciplinary record, and passes a written examination. The Texas Board of Legal Specialization certifies in more than twenty areas, and the Florida Bar's plan covers a similar spread. Certification then expires and has to be renewed, commonly every five years.

Where a state runs no program, the American Bar Association accredits private certifying organizations, and a certification from one of them counts. The list is short and covers fields such as trial advocacy, bankruptcy, and elder law. What matters is the source: the organization must be approved by a state authority or accredited by the ABA, because that is exactly the line the professional rules draw.

The rules police this language directly. ABA Model Rule 7.2(c), which carries forward the substance of the older Rule 7.4 that many states still number that way, says a lawyer may not state or imply that they are certified as a specialist unless two things are true: the lawyer holds a certification from an organization approved by a state authority or accredited by the ABA, and the name of the certifying organization appears in the communication itself. Model Rule 7.1 sits underneath and bars any false or misleading statement about a lawyer's services. A lawyer may honestly say that their practice is limited to family law. Printing certified specialist without the certification is a rules violation, not a marketing choice. When you see the phrase, look for the certifying body's name next to it.

Bar standing is the cheapest check and the one most people skip. Every state bar publishes a searchable member directory showing whether a license is active, when it was issued, and in most states whether the lawyer carries public discipline. Read the admission date, because it tells you how long they have actually practiced. Read the jurisdiction, because a lawyer licensed in the next state over cannot appear in your court without permission.

The docket record is the check almost nobody runs, and it is the most informative one. Federal filings are searchable through PACER, and the free RECAP archive at CourtListener mirrors a large share of them. State courts increasingly publish their own portals. Search the lawyer's name and read what comes back: how many cases, in what area, for plaintiffs or for defendants, and how those cases ended. A firm advertising trial experience with no trials on the docket is running a settlement practice. That is a legitimate practice. It is simply not the one the advertisement described.

Professional liability insurance is not required in most states. Oregon is the well-known exception, where coverage through the state's own fund is mandatory for lawyers in private practice, and a number of states require a lawyer to disclose whether they carry it. Everywhere else it is voluntary, so ask. A firm that will not answer the question has answered it. Coverage is written on a claims-made basis, which means the policy has to be in force when the claim is reported, not merely when the mistake was made.

Published work shows where a lawyer's attention has been. Reported appellate decisions with their name on the brief. A chapter in a state bar practice manual. A continuing legal education course they teach. Leadership in the bar section devoted to the area. None of it guarantees an outcome, and past results never predict a future one, but the lawyer who wrote the CLE on construction defect litigation is not new to construction defect litigation.

Treat award badges with more caution than they usually get. Some rating programs are independently researched and peer reviewed. Others charge for the plaque, the profile, or the placement. Several states require the name of the rating organization or a disclaimer whenever a lawyer advertises a ranking, precisely because the badges look alike and are not alike. Ask what the criteria were and whether the firm paid to display it. A real credential survives that question.

That is the standard this directory applies to itself. Where a firm has earned verification, its marks come from documents the firm uploaded and an editor reviewed one at a time, and a check on the profile shows what was verified, how it was verified, its status, and the date it was last looked at. A plan tier buys placement and features. It does not buy a check, and no amount of spending turns an unverified claim into a verified one.

Clients do not arrive with a practice area. They arrive with an event: a hospital bill, a letter, a police report, a locked office door. The index on this page runs the other direction, from the area down to the sub area, so the job is to translate the event into the branch that owns it.

Some of that translation is obvious. A DUI arrest is criminal defense. A green card application is immigration. A will is estate planning. The harder cases sit on the seam between two areas, and those are more common than the tidy examples suggest. Getting the seam wrong can cost you the second claim entirely, because the two areas run on different clocks and the shorter one keeps running while you work the longer one.

The workplace injury is the clearest example. A worker crushed by a machine on a job site has a workers' compensation claim against the employer, and in most states that claim is the exclusive remedy against that employer: no lawsuit, no pain and suffering, no jury. But the machine had a manufacturer, and the site had a general contractor, and either of them can be sued in an ordinary personal injury action for damages that workers' compensation does not pay. If the worker is then fired for filing the comp claim, that is a retaliation claim in employment law. One accident, three areas, three deadlines. A lawyer who only handles comp may never mention the other two.

The pattern repeats. A drunk driver who injures you creates a criminal case in which you are a witness and a civil case in which you are the plaintiff, and in many states a claim against the bar that kept serving him. A divorce with a business in the marital estate is family law, business valuation, and tax at once. A foreclosure can be real estate, bankruptcy, and consumer protection together, because the loan servicer's own errors may be independently actionable. A criminal conviction can end a non-citizen's status, which is why the Supreme Court held in Padilla v. Kentucky that defense counsel must advise a client about the deportation consequences of a plea.

When a matter spans two areas, the usual answer is two lawyers, or one lawyer who brings in the other. The rules let lawyers in different firms divide a fee only if the split reflects the work each performs or both assume joint responsibility, the client agrees in writing, and the total stays reasonable. That written consent is your protection. Ask who is actually doing the second piece and what it adds. A referral that costs you nothing extra is ordinary. One that quietly doubles the fee is not.

Before you call, read the profile with a short list of questions in hand. Does the firm list your problem at the sub area level rather than only the root category? Are its attorneys admitted in the state, and ideally in the court, where your matter will be heard? Is there a board certification, and does it name the certifying body? Does the stated fee model match the kind of case you have, and does the page say what a consultation costs? Are there approved client reviews, and do any of them describe a matter that resembles yours?

Then read the verification tab. It has four columns: what was verified, how it was verified, the status, and the date it was last checked. Document checks are marked Manually, because a person examined the evidence. Contact details are marked Automatically, because a machine confirmed them, and a working phone number is not a credential. The green verified badge appears only where an editor has approved at least one document check against uploaded evidence. It is earned, never bought. A firm without it is not thereby suspect: it has simply not submitted the documents.

On the call, ask concrete questions. How many matters like mine have you handled in this county in the last two years? Who will actually work the file, and will I meet that person? What is the deadline in my case, and what is the earliest one? What is the realistic range of outcomes, and what would make this case worse? A lawyer who answers a deadline question with a range instead of a date is guessing.

If the fee answer puts a lawyer out of reach, the case is not necessarily over. The Legal Services Corporation's Justice Gap research has found that low income Americans get no legal help, or not enough of it, for most of their significant civil legal problems. Legal aid organizations, law school clinics, court self-help centers, and state bar referral services exist for exactly this gap, and a fee shifting statute may make a private lawyer possible after all.

The practice area at the top of a profile is a claim. The bar record, the docket, the certification, and the dated checks behind it are the evidence. Read the evidence first, then make the call. Whatever else a lawyer can sell you, the one thing that cannot be bought is a check that an editor has actually run.