History Main / OmnidisciplinaryLawyer

* ''Series/TheGoodWife'' has had the main cast at Lockhart/Gardner and eventually Florrick/Agos doing everything from capital crime defense to immigration law to copyright law. Recurring characters tend to be specialists, however: Lockhart/Gardner's David Lee specializes in family law (e.g. divorces and paternity suits), while recurring antagonist Louis Canning mainly defends corporations from class-actions.

** Although, he does his best to get out of it, pointing out that he is not in fact a defense attorney. And he seems mainly to win because the judge is too tired to deal with his CourtroomAntics anymore.

* ''Franchise/PerryMason'' has Perry getting involved in a lot of different types of legal business- in fact, he often gets his trial clients by having them hire him for something else entirely.

* Marshall in ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'' is explicitly going to law school for the sake of becoming an environmental lawyer. However, he spends the majority of the series as a corporate lawyer for one evil MegaCorp or another. He also acts as counsel for his friends whenever they get into a scrape with the law.
** Justified in the latter case as the legal trouble that the gang get into is rarely especially serious and his advice is generally pretty vague.

* Alan Shore on BostonLegal regularly takes cases outside his specialty. It's usually explained as him having a personal interest in the case and his clients being unable to get another lawyer. When working on a credit card case he does get referred to a financial lawyer and tells him that he needs him for his expertise.

* Discussed and ultimately averted in the Australian movie ''The Castle'' - the main character wants his small-town local lawyer to work on a constitutional law case despite his pleas that he doesn't know anything about it. And indeed that's held up - the guy is useless in every trial we see him in (the best argument he can come up with is 'It's in the Constitution, it's just... it's the ''vibe''.'), and the protagonist only wins in the end because they manage to get an actual ''Queen's Counsel'' onto their side.

* During the SilverAge, [[Comicbook/{{Daredevil}} Murdock and Nelson]] seemed to be the only law firm in MarvelComics New York City. So despite the fact they were mostly criminal lawyers, Foggy and Matt seemed to be involved in everything from wills to contract negotiation.

In real life, each specific area of the law has centuries worth of traditions and precedents build up behind it. There are unique legal principles at work in all of these case areas. Law schools make their students take classes in a broad range of legal issues, but true understanding and expertise comes only through years of specialized training and experience. Put simply, a tax lawyer is not the guy you want handling your slip-and-fall case.

The legal counterpart of an OmnidisciplinaryScientist. In fiction, if you have a law degree, that means you can work on any legal issue, particularly trial law. Never mind that there are countless branches of law, such as tax law and copyright law, which are unrelated to trial law.

* In ''Series/ModernFamily'''s fourth-season finale, "Goodnight Gracie", the cast goes to Florida when Phil's mother dies. While there, Gloria has to answer for an old arrest warrant. Mitchell accompanies her to court and winds up representing not only her but various other defendants there. While the episode figures into his character arc because it leads him to conclude he wants to get back into litigating cases in court again, it's preposterous that a Florida judge would let a lawyer from California, presumably not a member of the Florida bar, just up and represent clients before her, or that Mitchell [[OmnidisciplinaryLawyer would be capable of handling the sort of low-level crime and traffic cases]], when he's been shown to primarily be doing either corporate or activist-type legal work back home.

* On ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', Lionel Hutz usually practices civil law, but he has taken cases as a prosecutor and a defense attorney as well. (One time as a court-appointed attorney, in fact.) His record in ''any'' branch of law isn't all-too good.

** Of course, the more competent [[AmoralAttorney Blue Haired Lawyer]] seems willing to take any case too, civil, criminal, and even divorce cases.

* A villainous example [[(IneffectualSympatheticVillain well, more or less)]] was Tony Stark's former lawyer [[AmoralAttorney Bert Hindel]]. Tony ordered Hindel, as the head of his legal department, to use the courts to stop [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Justin Hammer]] from using technology Hammer had stolen from Stark Enterprises. Hindel did such a poor job of representing Stark's interests that Tony finally fired him. Hindel would later return as the defense lawyer for Stark's StalkerWithACrush, Kathy Dare, who was facing attempted murder charges for [[{{Yandere}} shooting Tony]]. He used all sorts of sleazy legal tactics to make Stark look bad and portray Kathy as being under considerable mental stress. As a way of getting revenge on Stark, he also planned to write a juicy tell-all book with Kathy about what Tony was supposedly really like. Fortunately, Hindel didn't do any better than when he was the head of Stark's legal team, and ended up getting Kathy committed to a sanitarium. In any event, the fact that Hindel was trying to practice public, private, criminal, and civil law simultaneously, and was ''incompetent'' at all of them, shows why this Trope is unrealistic.

* Massey Reinstein of ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' was a public defender on Luna before signing on with the Toughs out of self defence. Since then, he's negotiated contracts, negotiated treaties, defended and prosecuted in civil and criminal cases, all in at least a half-dozen jurisdictions. He's also shot several opposing attorneys, although that's not directly related to his skills as a lawyer.

* Another lawyer aversion is in the 1992 TV movie ''To Catch A Killer''. The police are searching the home of local businessman (and SerialKiller) John Wayne Gacy.
-->'''Gacy:''' Can they do that?\\
'''Lawyer:''' ''(uncertain)'' Ah...I think so...\\
'''Gacy:''' ''(furious)'' What am I paying you for?!\\
'''Lawyer:''' To handle your ''business'' affairs!

* Discussed and ultimately averted in the Australian movie ''The Castle'' - the main character wants his small-town local lawyer to work on a constitutional law case despite his pleas that he doesn't know anything about it. And indeed that's held up - the guy is useless in every trial we see him in (the best argument he can come up with is 'It's in the Constitution, it's just... it's the ''vibe''.'), and the protagonist only wins in the end because they manage to get an actual QC onto their side.