In the last installment of My Law Office we outlined some of the reasons recent law school graduates and inductees to the bar would consider bankruptcy law as their area of concentration. Since then some readers asked whether too many lawyers had not already chosen bankruptcy as their area of concentration, and whether the field was already too crowded to be viable.
Good questions. After all, it’s well known that there are already too many lawyers, and a great many attorneys who’ve been in practice for years were “born again” over the past few years as bankruptcy practitioners. That means the supply of bankruptcy lawyers has risen and will continue to rise.
Surprisingly however, data gathered by the Public Access to Court Electronic Records service (Pacer) indicates that the demand for bankruptcy attorneys still exceeds supply and will do so for years. According to PACER data, the number of new cases filed in 2009 was 46% higher than it was the year before and due to the rising double-digit unemployment rate the number of filings will continue trending upwards through 2010 and beyond.
So get your bankruptcy credentials in order. You have a long and busy career ahead of you.
Part of the My Law Office series prepared exclusively by The Illinois Bankruptcy Lawyer Blog. For more information about starting a practice, bankruptcy law, or to contribute, contact us at mhedayat@mha-law.com.
