best areas of law (UK)

And I mean with a good balance of pay and not too long hours etc. Good pay in my opinion is around 80-100k after 10-15 years of experience and you don't neccessarily need to work in one of the top firms to achieve this. I am interested in law and I've tried searching it but I generally receive answers stating "corporate law is most lucrative but the hours are terrible" and "civil law the worst" without mentioning anything in between (a job that's less lucrative but not terrible and provides a decent work life balance).
Thanks for any help!

Reply 1

Stiffy Byng

What is it that interests you about the law? What would you enjoy doing?

By the way, statements such as "civil law is the worst" are meaningless.

Civil law has two meanings. Within the common law legal systems the term civil law encompasses every type of law that is not criminal law.

Civil law is also the term used to describe legal systems which are based more closely on Roman law than are the common law systems.

Most European countries have civil law systems. The term in that context originated as a way of distinguishing secular law from ecclesiastical law.

Reply 2

chalks

Building on Stiffy's points above, it's impossible to say what is the "best" area of law as that's almost entirely subjective even when you take into account your parameters of pay vs work/life balance.

The law covers just about every element of modern life. As such, there are lawyers who specialise in each of those elements. Criminal lawyers who focus on white collar crime/fraud. Corporate lawyers who act on multi-billion pound M&A deals. "High street" conveyancing specialists. Satellite constellation asset finance lawyers. Contentious probate lawyers. Divorce/family law specialists. Those who act on small residential property disputes. Employment lawyers some of who exclusively act for employers, others who act for employees or unions. Project finance specialists acting on massive mining projects in Francophone Africa. Private wealth lawyers acting for UHNWIs. Environmental lawyers acting for NGOs or pressure groups, or those acting for major polluters/miners/oil producers. Rural agricultural/farming law specialists.

You name it, there's a lawyer who does it.

Reply 3

Stiffy Byng

I add that, after ten years practice, any qualified lawyer who is not just doing conveyancing, legally aided immigration work or legally aided criminal law, or very basic High Street work ought to be able to gross at least about £90,000 a year if self employed. If employed, and not in a commercial firm, the lawyer may be able to earn close to that or more than that.

You could consider becoming a specialist in landlord and tenant law, agricultural law, privately paid immigration work, or business crime. Maybe have a look at medium sized commercial law firms in provincial cities. Note that some of those firms have industrials as clients. It can be very satisfying acting for a business which actually makes things, instead of yet another financial services operation. Clients who run businesses which actually make physical things or trade in physical things are in my experience far more pleasant to work for than clients who trade in imaginary things or give advice about imaginary things.

Capitalism used to be about the production of, the transport of, and the trade in physical things, all supported by finance. Nowadays Capitalism is often about finance of finance of finance of finance. The system blew up in 2008 and it is set to blow up again at some time, because nothing was done to fix the causes of the blow-up in 2008. The foxes were put back in charge of the hen house.

Big law firms mainly service the finance World, and the unreasonable demands of the unreasonable and greedy people who run that World dictate the working pattern of the big law firms, which are sometimes led by unreasonable and greedy people.