Fresh out of law school some thirty years ago, I felt enormously lucky to be hired at a national firm offering one of the top salary ranges. While I wasn’t bent on a particular practice area, I had received accolades for my participation in the moot court competitions and was a pretty decent writer (or so I thought), so I considered my placement with the litigation department both appropriate and exciting.
A month into the job, I realized something. Appellate law (and moot court) is not the same as litigation. And I was not cut out for litigation. Motions in limine, revision after revision of points and authorities, witness prep, understanding the proper behavior for appearing in court – I’m getting a stomach ache just thinking about it. It just wasn’t me. I was miserable.
Luckily, it was so early in my law career that changing practice areas was pretty easy. I somehow stumbled into a couple of real estate assignments for one of the firm’s partners, and she and I found a pleasant rapport. She, along with a bankruptcy partner and the head of the real estate group, gradually started giving me more work, and I gobbled it up. I loved being a “dirt lawyer.” My litigation supervisors weren’t terribly attached to me anyway, so I quickly embraced my new department. That’s how I changed specialties early on. Later, I would first narrow my focus to real estate redevelopment, and a decade later broaden my practice at an in-house position. You can see, this is a subject I know a little about!
But what if you’re employed by a specialty firm, where there’s only one, or maybe two practice areas in which to work? Or what if you’re further along in your career when you decide the demands of your current legal specialty are excessive for your lifestyle, or you just aren’t interested in it anymore? And what if the market changes, and your practice area is simply not in as much demand as it had been?
Be Careful What You Wish For
I asked a few friends who’ve changed practice areas how they did it. Several of them left the law firm employing them in order to make the change. One of them, like me, sought out work in a different practice area within the firm in order to shift focus, and continued on that new path. All of them were happier with their current practice than they had been previously.
Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Sometimes it’s a frying pan to the fire situation. So it’s important to do your research on the practice area to which you’re aspiring. Three questions can help you determine if you really want to make the change you’re considering:
Are you ready to feel like a novice again? If you’re fairly new to the practice of law, this is an easier question to answer affirmatively. You’re likely less invested in your current practice area, which can make it easier to switch gears. But if you’ve been practicing law for awhile, be aware that initially, at least, you may not get the plum assignments, or might have to spend more time on tasks with which you’re unfamiliar.
Are you willing to invest substantial time and effort into learning a new practice area? Again, if you are early in your law career, you are likely still investing time in learning your current field of law, so this may be an easy “yes” for you. Conversely, if you’ve spent a decade developing a niche practice in commercial lending, for example, you may be less likely to want to start over in an unrelated area.
Do you understand why you want to switch? In my opinion, this is the most important question. Just being unhappy at your job may not mean you need a whole new practice area. Consider whether your discontent is due to personality conflicts with your managers, a deficit in work-life balance, or discomfort with firm culture. If so, then you might just need a different employer! If the answer is you’re truly bored with, uninspired by, or simply hate what you’re doing, or conversely have become passionate about a new area, then investing the time to move to a different practice area may be the best solution.
Eenie Meenie Miney Mo
Even if you already know which practice area to which you want to transition, it still may be wise to take some time to explore the field in more detail. Chat with other area practitioners in your firm or network. Perhaps take a day or two to shadow a lawyer in your chosen new field. Just like traveling somewhere and deciding you want to live there, vacationing in a place and living there are two different things. Observe the rhythm of the days spent engaged in the new practice area, the emotional intensity of the work, how much (or little) social interaction transpires in a typical day. So much of job satisfaction aligns with “emotional and psychological needs - not just financial ones,” according to a survey of over 15,000 people completed in 2025 by Susana Ferreira, a professor of economics at the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. As ZenCare, an online therapy matching service noted, “it’s the internal motivators - purpose, respect, connection” that have the biggest impact on job satisfaction.
Educate Yourself
Changing legal specialties requires you to have at least a baseline of knowledge about the subject matter. This can be accomplished in many different ways, including seeking out subject matter specific continuing legal education (CLE) seminars and conferences; staying on top of new developments in your chosen practice area by setting up a Google alert; and joining and attending state or local bar committee meetings for specialized practitioners.
EP Dine, a legal recruiting firm, suggests looking into possible certifications or credentials that may be available for your chosen specialty, and lists programs to obtain such qualifications. Credentials can help you build a strong reputation for expertise in your chosen legal practice area. Alycia Kinchloe of Kinchloe Law agrees, especially in certain highly regulated or statutory practice areas. “I think that what happens is that you open yourself up to liability issues…” she notes. “If you’re going into bankruptcy, you’re going into employment law, those are areas where you can really be exposed if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Figure out the hot issues in your new practice area, and study up on those. This was important to me when transitioning from private practice to a position within a publicly traded company with a broader scope. Before I was even hired, I was hearing buzzwords like “FIN46” and “consolidation”, terminology relating to publicly traded company accounting practices under GAAP. I spent a good ten or twenty hours poring over Google results describing the nuances of FIN46 and its progeny before I even was called for an interview, so I could speak semi-intelligently about this important concept when it arose. This was time well spent, as I found myself involved in this issue extensively over the course of the next two decades with the company.
Making the Leap
You’ve done your homework, reworked your resume and developed some credentials in your chosen practice area. You’re ready to make the change. Now what? What path provides the best way to move from your current practice area to the new specialty?
Change employers
As mentioned above, many of my attorney friends who’ve changed practice areas over the course of their career (and there are many, believe me, so don’t ever feel that you’re alone in this decision) found new employment with a different firm or company in their chosen practice area. If you’re a newer attorney, you will be on par with most other applicants, so this isn’t as challenging as it might be once you’ve got several years of practice in a different specialty under your belt.
If you are in the latter category and trying to change jobs as well as practice areas, Chere Estrin, CEO of Estrin Legal Staffing, recommends a re-tool of your resume. “[R]esumes should be reworked to emphasize key qualifications for new objectives,” she notes. “The best way to get started is to research the specialty you're trying to break into and understand what hiring managers want. Learn about the skills and other credentials that are important in your new career and put those skills first in your resume. Don’t assume employers will know you have those skills.”
Change Departments
If you work in a large, full-service firm, an easier route to changing specialties may be to change departments within your firm. This route to a new practice area can be more fraught, however. EP Dine notes that internal law firm dynamics can make change difficult. “Partners often view associates as part of their specific practice groups, which can make it politically sensitive for a lawyer to leave one team and join another. Additionally, firms typically prefer to hire lateral associates who already possess the necessary skills and experience in a specialty, rather than investing in retraining existing staff.” Make sure to assess the environment before verbalizing your desire for change. It may be better to look outward for change.
Step Away From Law
Another step in my varied career was when I left law altogether to take a business position within a facilities management company. I was still involved in real estate, but gained invaluable knowledge of public law, which helped me eventually transition back to a law firm department that specialized in representing public agencies involved in urban renewal and redevelopment. The knowledge and skill set I developed in my business position was a huge benefit when I decided to step back into private practice.
The step away from law might be temporary, as mine was, or permanent. You might find that you enjoy the business position more than legal practice, and decide to stay! I have a number of lawyer friends who either chose not to practice law from the start or transitioned to a business position and remained there.
In House
Another pathway to switching practice areas is a move to an in-house position at a private or public company. This was a great move for me later in my legal career when redevelopment law (which I had been practicing for almost a decade) declined dramatically. My in-house job allowed me to gradually expand my expertise from real estate into construction, commercial contracting, M&A, risk management, and to some extent and in a full circle kind of way, litigation management. In my experience, in-house positions can be quite competitive, so leveraging your network or using a headhunter to provide access to decision makers or their colleagues can be helpful here. Reworking that resume to emphasize any prior business experience can also boost your chances.
A hybrid version of an in-house spot is seconding, in which a law firm “lends” an attorney to a client to work as an interim in-house lawyer. Secondment opportunities provide valuable experience and can help you land a permanent in-house spot down the road, as well as test new specialties before making a permanent change. There’s plenty of good on-line information on secondment, including the blog article you’ll find here.
Conclusion
Changing practice areas as a lawyer is not always easy, but it happens a lot. One recent report found that 60% of legal professionals have seriously considered leaving their current role or the profession altogether. The best advice, in my opinion, is to make sure you are seeking change for the right reasons. Reactive change doesn’t necessarily bring the best results; as Alycia Kinchloe notes, if you do it for the wrong reason, “you’re going to end up in the same boat in another one year, two years, or three years because you didn’t fix whatever the deeper issues were…” Notwithstanding this cautionary note, I definitely found each of my transitions to new practice areas satisfying and inspiring, so don’t be afraid to follow your heart and do what you love!
As a veteran of thirty years of legal practice, Melanie Houk welcomes the opportunity to look back on a career nearer to completion than commencement. A graduate of Loyola Law School, Melanie initially took a nontraditional direction, leaving a first-year position at Whitman Breed Abbott & Morgan to take a job as a consultant. Eventually returning to private practice, Melanie spent nearly a decade developing further public law expertise with redevelopment agencies and municipalities before gravitating to an in-house position at Lennar Corporation, where a markedly convoluted path led her to a promotion to Deputy General Counsel, a position she has held for close to fifteen years.
