At a dinner party I am asked — perhaps for the hundredth time — what I specialise in. The honest answer annoys the questioner, so let me try a better one. Because the assumption behind the question deserves a word of response.
The assumption is that every proper lawyer has one field and one field only. The assumption is that the person who does criminal law cannot read a rental agreement and the person who drafts contracts would pass out in a hearing of witnesses. The assumption is the more flattering, of course, because it places a technical specialist between you and a complicated world. You don't have to think about whether the lawyer understands the problem; the specialist seal answers that for you.
In reality the assumption cuts both ways. I am a "Fachanwalt für Verkehrsrecht" and a "Fachanwalt für Arbeitsrecht", which means that I have passed theoretical and practical certification in those fields. Excellent. It does not mean that I can only do that. My partner Moritz Peters is a specialist in criminal and employment law. Between us we represent people in matters that fall neither into "criminal" nor into "traffic" nor into "employment" — general civil law, neighbourhood disputes, inheritance, contracts.
Two things, in my view, matter more than a certificate for the client who is looking for a lawyer. The first is whether the lawyer has an honest willingness to say: "This is not my territory. Let me put you in touch with a colleague." I do that several times a month. It is one of the simplest professional virtues and remarkably hard to practise in an environment that financially rewards you for saying yes. If your lawyer never declines, consider whether your case is being handled by someone who has time for it, or by someone who is simply unable to turn down work.
The second is continuity. A specialist who handles your case for a week and then hands it off to a paralegal serves you less than a generalist who remains in charge throughout, asks ten questions that pure specialists no longer even notice, and calls you personally when the court has made its decision. I have seen cases lost by specialists who saw the tree, and others won by generalists who saw the forest.
So — to my dinner-party friend — my specialisation is: I know my colleagues well enough to know when you should see them instead. And for what I do handle myself, I try to do it properly, which means: without being so specialised that I forget that your case happens to you, not in a textbook.