Tom Kane mentioned a four page report, the 19th annual (wow) “What’s hot, what’s not in the legal profession” by Bob Denny, and suggests that this is the time of year to reflect on your practice areas and focus for the new year.

Hot practice areas include intellectual property, immigration, and elder law, which make sense. Animal law (think Michael Vick) is very niche, but has great marketing possibilities. “Global warming” just makes me shiver. But I digress.

One hot practice area is “Corporate Investigations”. Denny says it’s the fastest growing area of White Collar Crime, but does not elaborate. If you’ve read my posts over the last week or so, you’ve seen me talk about identity theft, including corporate liability for for failure to safeguard employee, vendor, and customer data (whether compromised or not). Exposure includes criminal liability, and while prosecution is likely (in my opinion) in only the most egregious cases, it lends credence to another hot (or soon-to-be-hot) practice area I’ve mentioned: advising businesses on compliance with this quickly evolving area of law.

Denny says libel is becoming hotter, in part because of an increasing number of suits against bloggers and message boards. Yikes!

One “emerging trend” I applaud is “leadership training”. Denny says, “Faced with continued high attrition as well as a generation gap, more firms are recognizing theyneed to not only retain their associates and younger partners, but also develop them into well-rounded, business-savvy lawyers.” We’ll see.

Lastly, Denny talks about a host of marketing and business devolpment trends. I’d like to comment on these, but I don’t want to insinuate myself into the hot practice area I mentioned two paragraphs ago. . .