Civil Litigation

What is Civil Litigation?

Law and litigation is roughly broken up into Criminal litigation, Civil Litigation and Transactional Work. Criminal litigation is pretty easy to understand, involving criminal defense. While prosecutors are involved in criminal litigation, they are traditionally excluded from the definition.

Transactional work includes attorneys who negotiate contracts, work in patent filings, real estate deals, mergers & acquisitions, governmental filings, oversight work and areas like that. They traditionally do not go to court to argue, nor do they start law suits.

Civil litigation encompasses a broad swath of attorneys who prepare and prosecute law suits in court over any tort, contract or special proceeding. We often think of personal injury, of worker’s compensation, of business law suits, of employment discrimination and many other varieties of cases in which a law suit is necessary to protect rights of clients, on either the plaintiff or the defense side.