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1 " If your firm gives you a choice of departments, think carefully about which practice area will best suit your personality. Keep in mind that your specialty will affect not only the type of legal services you’ll perform, but also the skills and knowledge you’ll develop. And it’s important to remember that at a large firm, you’ll likely only get one choice. There are very few attorneys at large firms who have more than one specialty, or change specialties down the road. As a result, the first choice you make is likely to affect the work you do for years to come.If, for some reason, you get stuck with a specialty you don’t like, make a change as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the harder it is to jump to another specialty. For one thing, as lawyers gain seniority, their firms may resist the change for fear of a loss of expertise that took the firm years to nurture and develop. Even if your firm does let you change specialties down the road, it may reduce your seniority or salary to reflect your newly acquired inexperience in your new practice area.Changing specialties further on in your career can also impair your marketability in the legal community. After all, if you make a change when your salary has reached a high level, other firms who culd hire you might choose not to, feeling they can get attorneys more experienced in the specialty for less money. Because your future potential in your new specialty is less valuable to a new employer than your past experience in your old specialty, it’s very easy to get “pigeon-holed” in a particular practice area after just a few years in practice. "
― , Proceed with Caution: A Diary of the First Year at One of America's Largest, Most Prestigious Law Firms
2 " What a waste of time it would be to insist that everyone develop each of the specialties we call upon to an equal level. We'd get bogged down in remedial training programs, trying to get the cornet players up to speed with the computer programmers, sacrificing the tends to be exceptional in so many individual situations in order to be average in all of them. "
― , Leadership Secrets of the Salvation Army
3 " Health care historically has been a very siloed field that's organized around medical specialties - urology, cardiac surgery, and so forth - and around the supply of these specialty services. The patient is the ping-pong ball that moves from service to service. "
4 " There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases a man must be familiar with their manifestations in many organs. "