It’s becoming time for a career change for me, but I don’t know exactly what I want to do. I’ve been working in real estate (marketing/research) for a few years and I really like the field. I just want something more challenging (and more profitable!) than my current position.
Does anyone have any experience with real estate law? How competitive a field is it (both during and after law school)? Do you find it interesting and challenging? Are the skills transferrable if I ever decide to move to a different state? What are the best parts of the job? The worst parts? Any other thoughts for someone considering this field?
I do a lot of real estate transactions but it’s actually a combo of some highly specialised regulatory stuff, banking/financing, and property.
- I didn’t take any classes in real estate during law school although I have a pretty strong property background (lots of environmental courses, land use planning, personal property etc…about the only thing I didn’t take in terms of property was real estate financing/transactions). Right now I’m doing an honors fellowship for the feds.
I don’t know what you mean by competitive during lawschool b/c the competition during lawschool was mostly to make good grades and get good summer jobs and mostly it lay in getting jobs at the “best” firms rather than in a particular area of the law. As far as my current job goes-most of the federal fellowships receive a bunch of applicants and they only take about 20-40 tops but it’s not nearly as competitive as a judicial clerkship. There is a GPA cut-off, though.
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It’s okay, I think I would have preferred doing something in environmental litigation rather than property/finance transactions & regulatory compliance but you can’t really afford to be picky when you’re running out of time for finding a job in an area that’s hard to move into as a lawyer (not to mention the fact that the EPA isn’t doing so hot right now). It’s moderately challenging but the thing I enjoy the most is my lifestyle. That has more to do with being a federal lawyer than a real estate lawyer, though.
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Reading through regulations is a pain in the ass. But keep in mind that I do highly specialised work that’s not typical of most real estate lawyers.
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Transferability of skills…I don’t know exactly what you’re getting at by this. You do have to take the bar in every state you intend to practice in. If you’re a real estate lawyer in MA and you want to move to NY-you have to either take the bar again or be waived in. If you have your own firm-the transferability doesn’t really pertain to your skills but the fact that you’re going to lose all your clients from the move. I don’t know why a firm would care…lawyers move around.
The biggest thing with the stuff I’m doing is that it’s so highly specialised in terms of the property/real estate elements that there aren’t a lot of people doing what I do on the private side and it’s a pretty profitable business so firms are looking for people who have experience. On the other hand-if I want to continue in this area specifically-I’m limiting myself to firms that make it a part of their business. But, since I do some fairly diverse transactions and I’m pretty early in my career I could probably jump to the banking/finance side of things fairly easily if I wanted to.
Good luck!