Real estate lawyers- what’s it like?

[Lulu_spector]

Looking for insight about the practice of real estate law! 
 

Hours, day to day, present and future opportunities and growth, options for future work (can it give you experience to do other areas of law?), pros and cons and your overall experience and job satisfaction and work life balance. 

[KOMODO]

It will depend completely on what kind of real estate law you practice. Generally, commercial real estate is far more demanding, academic, and technical, while residential real estate is more predictable, volume-based, and straightforward.

[OntheVerge]

I'm pretty happy with life as a real estate lawyer. Day to day depends on how busy we are and hours in the office reflect that. I'm here minimum 8:30 - 5:30 most days, usually working through lunch. In busy times of the year, it's more like 8:00 - 6:00, but some days longer and sometimes I have to go in on weekends. And if things go awry late in the day, I'm there until it gets sorted. But I'd say hours are mostly regular. I'm happy with my work-life balance, except for those extremely busy months out of the year. I have time to pursue my hobbies, stay active, and a social life.

Day to day is mostly reviewing files, client meetings, and dealing with things that come up on a file that aren't straightforward. One thing I was unprepared for is the volume. There's a lot of turn over on files, you have multiple files for a few weeks, they close and are done, and you're on to the new ones. I had more experience in criminal law, where you have a fewer number of files and have them for much longer. And with numerous, new files are the numerous client meetings. I do anywhere from 5-20 meetings in a week. Keeping names and files straight takes practice and high levels of organization.

Cons for me is that it's an area where my best strengths don't get to come out too often. Research, innovation, writing...aren't the day to day skills. If you get a straightforward file, it's pretty much by rote making sure everything that needs to be done is done. Clients can sometimes be difficult but that isn't unique to real estate law. 

 Overall, I'm pretty happy with my career choice thus far. 

[Jaggers]

If you want to become a judge, don't go into real estate law.

[Lulu_spector]

3 hours ago, KOMODO said:

It will depend completely on what kind of real estate law you practice. Generally, commercial real estate is far more demanding, academic, and technical, while residential real estate is more predictable, volume-based, and straightforward.

Thank you! In what way is commercial real estate academic? That’s interesting 

2 hours ago, OntheVerge said:

I'm pretty happy with life as a real estate lawyer. Day to day depends on how busy we are and hours in the office reflect that. I'm here minimum 8:30 - 5:30 most days, usually working through lunch. In busy times of the year, it's more like 8:00 - 6:00, but some days longer and sometimes I have to go in on weekends. And if things go awry late in the day, I'm there until it gets sorted. But I'd say hours are mostly regular. I'm happy with my work-life balance, except for those extremely busy months out of the year. I have time to pursue my hobbies, stay active, and a social life.

Day to day is mostly reviewing files, client meetings, and dealing with things that come up on a file that aren't straightforward. One thing I was unprepared for is the volume. There's a lot of turn over on files, you have multiple files for a few weeks, they close and are done, and you're on to the new ones. I had more experience in criminal law, where you have a fewer number of files and have them for much longer. And with numerous, new files are the numerous client meetings. I do anywhere from 5-20 meetings in a week. Keeping names and files straight takes practice and high levels of organization.

Cons for me is that it's an area where my best strengths don't get to come out too often. Research, innovation, writing...aren't the day to day skills. If you get a straightforward file, it's pretty much by rote making sure everything that needs to be done is done. Clients can sometimes be difficult but that isn't unique to real estate law. 

 Overall, I'm pretty happy with my career choice thus far. 

Thank you for this 🙂 I’m sorry if this is personal, but is the income, or your income, balanced fairly with the workload?
 

Also, is this something one can simply apply to or are there specific things to do during law school to be able to go into this stream?

2 hours ago, Jaggers said:

If you want to become a judge, don't go into real estate law.

Hahaha you’re awesome! I am just researching options to create my plan. I want to know as much as I can about all possible areas of practice! 

[ZineZ]

I'm not going to merge them as @KOMODO's excellent AMA was big law focused, but there is also the following AMA:

OP, you'll find a list of recent AMAs here: