As you said, the purpose of “finding a niche” is to attract clients, so I feel that we should not narrowly interpret Eben’s idea of finding a niche as to just finding a specialization. My interpretation of what he said is that, in order to attract clients, we must find something that we can do better than others. As the attorney mentioned by John, if she can practice a variety of areas of law and still beat other lawyers, then her “niche” is to do a variety of areas of law.

Moreover, I feel that “finding a niche” will be a trial and error process because you just won’t know whether you are good at something without trying it first. Of course, it is impractical to try out all areas of law. But I think through researching different areas of practices and networking with lawyers from those practices, we can probably narrow down our choices and whether you choose the right one is a risk that you just have to take.

Finally, if this is any comfort, I think that you cannot choose a “wrong choice.” People make decisions based on a present perspective and currently available information, but they evaluate this decision in the future based on a future perspective and future information. What seems “wrong” in the future is quite possibly “right” now. The same can be said about any choice that you can make now, so there is no need to worry about making a "wrong" choice with respect to the future.

-- RyanSong - 28 Mar 2010