Why To Specialize

There are distinct drawbacks to trying to do everything. It's more interesting to specialize.

When I first hung out my own shingle, it was tempting to do every type of law under the sun. For one thing, most of the referrals I initially received were from people who weren’t exactly sure what I had done in my large law firm career. Also, I didn’t really like my odds of being able to maintain a practice only doing securities law. I assumed I’d be offering “outside general counsel” services to startups and small businesses, which meant I’d be doing a little bit of everything. After all, most small businesses don’t retain an “outside general counsel” so that person can tell them they need a litigator, a labor and employment attorney, a tax attorney, and a real estate attorney — it’s expected the outside general counsel will be handling the vast majority of these matters him or herself (yes, even small litigation matters).

Besides, after spending 10 years as a securities lawyer, doing other things sounded like a welcome change. Grass is always greener, you know. Suddenly, I was learning about liquor licenses, intellectual property, wage and overtime laws, city codes, and other areas that seemed interesting. (Actually, strike that last one; city codes were never interesting, and if I never have to look up another one again it’ll be too soon.) Doing IPOs felt like another lifetime ago.

However, there are distinct drawbacks to trying to do everything. I’ll discuss a few.

First, there’s a limit to what you can charge someone for an area of law you don’t know. People are willing to pay for expertise. If a person just needs a lawyer and any ole lawyer will do, they’re not going to pay top dollar. They’re going to pay as little as possible. To give you some hard numbers, generalists tend to stay in the $150/hr to $250/hr range, which may sound great to those of you out there billing eight hours a day, but trust me, SmallLaw doesn’t work that way.

Second, it’s much easier to pitch for work in your practice area. Potential clients who take the time to talk to you will be able to pick up on whether you know what you’re talking about. Besides, I always found it stressful when I was trying to bluff my way through a client pitch, knowing at any moment I could get called out on my lack of knowledge. You can prepare and practice until you’re blue in the face, but you still can’t anticipate everything a client may ask. Also, with LinkedIn and the internet in general, people can find out your background pretty easily.  You can’t suddenly manufacture a background as an entertainment lawyer.

Third, experienced lawyers can see through you. I was dabbling in trademark law for a client — not because I had pitched for it, but because it was ancillary to something else I was working on for them. I contacted the attorney for the other party who had handled the trademark matter I was following up on, and explained in a nice, friendly email what I needed from him, or at least what I thought I needed from him. He responded within 30 minutes with a lengthy email explaining why the forms I had cited were not the correct forms. Apparently he was incapable of simply stating Form Y was needed instead of Form X. No, he had to go on and on about how much of an idiot I was to think Form X was needed. And not only that, he copied my client. WTF?!? My email had only been to him.  He also copied his client, which was kind of okay, or at least understandable, but why copy my client? Even though my client knew I wasn’t a trademark lawyer, it was still a very bad look. I only get those types of emails when I’m going outside of securities law.

Fourth, it’s more interesting to specialize. The initial spark of getting to work on other stuff goes away pretty quickly when you realize you’re continually having to give advice on matters you don’t really have the right background for and after you get a few emails like the one I just mentioned. When you specialize, you can go deeper and deeper into a subject, and when there is a new development you may be well-positioned to be an authority on it relatively quickly, and enjoy the attention and the increased pecuniary awards that go along with it. For example, working with tech companies on securities law matters led directly to my working on legal issues related to virtual currency. I wouldn’t have had that opportunity had I remained a generalist.

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The perfect career path, other than being a kept man, is probably doing general matters early in your career, and then specializing as you get older. That way, you at least have some familiarity with various practice areas, but then can enjoy the fruits of specialization later.


Gary J. Ross is a partner at Ross & Shulga PLLC, which he co-founded in 2017 after running his own firm for four years and after several years in Biglaw and the federal government. Gary handles corporate and securities law matters for venture capital funds, startups, and other large and small businesses, as well as investors in each. You can reach Gary by email at Gary@RSglobal.law.

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