fall river personal injury attorneytoYou have a situation that requires legal representation and your friends recommend that you just find an attorney. However, when you browse local listings, you immediately find more than 10 different types of attorneys. Who knew how many different areas of law practice exist?

There were approximately 1.33 million practicing lawyers in the US as of 2020.

The numbers haven’t changed much over the years. Let’s take a look at the different types of lawyers and what they specialize in.

What Practice Areas Mean

A practice area is an area of law that an attorney focuses on. Depending on the type of legal assistance that you need, you will want to look for an attorney that focuses on that particular practice area. Some attorneys prefer to give businesses legal assistance while others would rather assist in criminal cases.

Personal Injury Attorneys

If you were injured due to the recklessness of someone else, a personal injury attorney can help you get compensation. They can file a personal injury lawsuit or negotiate with the at-fault party’s insurance company on your behalf. Your personal injury attorney will prove liability by establishing:

  • The other party owed you a duty of care. This means that their actions or inactions should have been reasonable given the circumstances
  • They breached their duty of care. This means that their actions or inactions violated the duty of care
  • The breach caused your injuries, which consequently impacted your quality of life and resulted in expenses.

Some of the cases that personal injury attorneys tackle include:

  • Car accidents
  • Pedestrian accidents
  • medical malpractice
  • Truck Accidents
  • Dog bites
  • Nursing home injuries
  • Wrongful death

Although some personal injury cases might involve intentional acts, they aren’t necessarily criminal acts.

Intellectual Property Attorney

An intellectual property attorney protects intellectual property such as technological, creative, scientific, and original inventions from others who want to profit off of it. They can secure your copyrights, trademarks, licensing agreements, and patents.

Family Attorneys

Family attorneys deal with divorce, custody dispute, post, and prenuptial agreements, adoption, and emancipation among other emotionally charged cases. In most cases, a family attorney has to have knowledge of other parts of the law. For instance, if they are working on an emancipation case, they may need testimony about a domestic criminal case the parents.

Malpractice Attorneys

Personal injury attorneys deal with different types of malpractice including:

  • Medical malpractice. These are suits filed against medical professionals. The four areas of medicine where malpractice is likely to be filed include cosmetic surgery, prescription drugs, birth injuries, and surgical errors.
  • Legal malpractice. You can sue an attorney if they fail to complete their duty with a level of expertise expected of them, there is a conflict of interest, overbills, or poorly represents the facts of your case.
  • White-collar malpractice. Professionals in the finance field can make misleading statements or accountants can make accounting errors resulting in serious financial losses. In such situations, they might be held liable.