Intellectual Property to Dominate Legal Landscape
With the technology industry expected to continue its soaring growth throughout the next decade, forty-eight percent of attorneys polled in a national survey believe intellectual property will be the hottest practice area in law over the next 10 years. This field received more than three times the response of the next choice, corporate transactional law.
The survey was developed by The Affiliates, a leading staffing service specializing in project attorneys, paralegals and legal support personnel. It was conducted by an independent research firm and includes responses from 200 attorneys among the nation's 1,200 largest law firms.
Attorneys were asked, "What do you expect will be the hottest practice area over the next 10 years?" Their responses:
Intellectual property | 48% |
Corporate transactional | 15% |
Employment | 11% |
General litigation | 5% |
Computer law/computer technology | 2% |
Environmental | 2% |
Y2K litigation | 2% |
Other | 7% |
Don't know/no answer | 8% |
| 100% |
Kathleen Call, Executive Director of The Affiliates, notes, "Factors such as the rapid growth of new technologies, ongoing evolution of the Internet and an expanding biomedical field ensure that intellectual property issues -- ranging from patents and trademarks to licensing and copyright litigation -- will rank as top priorities for attorneys this decade."