Calling all lawyers! List of specific fields for Law

[apoc527]

Last thought for now:

THe problem when trying to model real lawyers is easily exemplified by grabbing a big firm lawyer profile from a major firm. I'll use my wife, since I can explain to her why someone put a link to her profile on a gaming forum...

http://www.perkinscoie.com/sbernstein/

She and I went to law school at the exact same time, got about the same grades, and have been practicing law for basically the same number of years ('cept she had a maternity leave and I didn't).

If government lawyers like me had profile pages (we don't), mine would say under Practice Areas: "Consumer Protection." But look at what hers says!! (And amusingly, I haven't looked at her profile recently--this list has grown by quite a few areas since I last looked!)

That's, what, sixteen or so "discrete" practice areas??!? There is NO WAY she has significantly more "points" invested in Law skills than I do. She has some different law skills, and our character sheets will definitely differ, but given that we did about the same in law school, we should be pretty similar point totals. We've been out of school for about 6 years...go look up some partners who have 20 years experience and check on their lists! (Some will be bigger, some smaller...it just depends, which is the ultimate lawyer answer.)

If GURPS requires her to take 16 (or even half that) individual skills, that's not really accurate.

How to proceed...I shall have to ponder this more, but the real issue is that she doesn't just immediately "know" the answer to any reasonably complex legal question that any client is going to actually pay to get the answer to. It requires a fair amount of work...Research and Writing...to get to an answer.

Maybe Law should really just be by broad jurisdiction and shouldn't have specialties at all...that's not quite right either. I am coming back to the Technique concept, honestly. I'll think more.