“Very narrow areas of expertise can be very productive. Develop your own profile. Develop your own niche.”

    --Leigh Steinberg

For many lawyers, focusing on a practice area niche may lead to a more meaningful and prosperous career. This is because handling cases that truly matter to you will make you a better, happier lawyer in the long run.

Unfortunately, many larger firms are unwilling to support niche practices as was the case for this month’s Xemplar, Bill Marler, and a previous Xemplar, Susan Burke. As Susan explains, she left her position as partner in a large firm because partners in the firm were uncomfortable with the politically charged human rights cases that she handles, such as the Abu Ghraib torture cases:

“The type of cases just became impossible to do in the setting I was in. It was a partnership – and some partners supported the cases while others vehemently opposed my handling them – and I didn’t want to do that to the firm.”

Marler faced a similar reaction from partners at his firm when he expressed an interest in focusing on foodborne illness litigation. So, like Susan, he left the firm and started his own niche practice.

Many times, choosing a niche is easy - especially if you’ve practiced for a few years while employed by a large firm. That was the case for Burke, Marler and David Mills, another recent Xemplar.

According to Mills, choosing federal appellate litigation as a niche was an obvious choice, in light of his past experiences, both at his former firm and as a law clerk for two different federal judges:

“I considered whether there was a way I could do my own thing and create my own practice – whether I could limit my practice to federal appeals. I knew I had a good hand at that; I knew how judges reacted – what was convincing and what wasn’t. I thought I could do it because I had a sense of how it worked.”

Of course, even if you’ve practiced for years in a firm or if you’ve just hung your shingle, business will most likely be slow at first. Building up a book of business takes time, as does developing a reputation in your legal community. So, at first, it may not be practical to limit your entire caseload to a particular legal niche. After all, you’ve got bills to pay and it may make financial sense to occasionally take on cases outside of your preferred area of practice.

However, you should be able to gradually limit the vast majority of your cases to your chosen niche by slowly reducing your caseload in other areas that are of less interest to you. Over time, as you handle more cases in your chosen niche, you’ll develop a reputation in that niche and, as happened to Marler, you may find that lawyers in your community will begin to refer those types of cases to you:

“After the Jack in the Box case, foodborne illness cases were referred to me because the other lawyers got stuck or didn’t know what to do … Like the Odwalla Case, which killed five and caused kidney problems, in November 1996. I ended up getting most of those cases. That was the moment where I was thinking, I wonder if this is something I can do all the time.”

For Marler, the decision to focus on food poisoning cases has made all the difference. His firm has now developed an expertise that puts it at the epicenter of most food poisoning outbreaks.

So, just as Marler, Burke and Mills did, you may want to consider limiting your practice to a niche that you enjoy and are passionate about. By doing so, you can focus your efforts on cases that truly matter to you while at the same time establishing a reputation as the “go to” lawyer in your field. Give it some time and you just may find yourself on a very successful and fulfilling career path.