Practice Management

When lawyers talk about lemon laws, they might be talking about consumer protection or deceptive practices in a broader sense.  But, those are practice areas and not necessarily niches.  Practicing in the area of lemon law is a niche.

Lemon law also does not refer to actual fruits or produce.  It refers to what is known as the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and a host of state laws that protect the purchases of cars, trucks, vans, SUVs, motorcycles, RVs or similar type vehicle and mechanical, warranty-based goods, that fail to meet standards of quality and performance.  These failed products are called "lemons"

In the 1800s, it is said, people started to use the work "lemon" to describe others who were sour or unfriendly.  The word came to be recorded as slang term meaning a "worthless thing".  From this, these laws have been tagged with this description.

For those interested, Lemon Law America, is a good place to start.  It can give you some very basic information, and then point you to some attorneys and websites in your area that practice in this area.

There are actually several websites like Lemon Law America, and if you wanted to practice in this area, you would probably need to look into getting listed on these sites.  Another one is Lemon Law for Consumers.  The website Car Lemon will even site you the specific lemon laws in your state, and help you locate other attorneys that do this work.  You can look at these attorneys as competition, but you can also look at these websites as a means of locating possible mentors or at least introductions you can make of attorneys to call on once you get into your first cases in the front door.

There are a lot of general but otherwise useful governmental websites that can help you get started with you knowledge base.  The Texas Department of Transportation, for example, has one, as does the California Attorney General's office, Florida, Washington State, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Tennessee, just to name a few.

Lemon issues are obviously a big problem for the Better Business Bureau.  So the BBB has a web page dedicated to it that will take you to a summary of the law for every state.

There are any number of attorney websites on the subject form which you can begin to gleam important information and inspiration.  For example, The law firm of Kimmel & Silverman handles computer lemon issues at ComputerLemonLaw.Com.  And, there are lemon law blogs, such as Texas Lemon Law Blog by Keven Le, The Lemon Law Blog, California Lemon Law Blog, New Jersey Lemon Law Lawyer Blog and Lemon Justice just to name a few.

It is true that the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler might have put a crimp in the practices of those now practicing in this niche, but this will have less effect going forward and auto company bankruptcies are a rare thing.  Also, as stated lemon laws apply to more than just popular automobiles.  At least one website, Autotropolis, is reporting that the new GM entity will honor the lemon law claims.

For lawyers needing to learn and for guidance, the National Consumer Law Center publishes a number of legal manuals, including forms and guildes, that deal with this and other issues, including for example its book Automobile Fraud.

If you believe you need something more basic to give you the overview you need, other than the Internet, there are more consumer oriented books such as The Lemon Law Bible, Lemon Laws (Oceana's Legal Almanac Series for the Layperson), and any number of other ones which you can find on sites like Amazon.Com. 

I think what is important to keep in mind is that niche practices such as this help the attorney stand out and more easily market a law practice.  And, whereas there are a lot of websites about lemon laws, there are many lemon type cases out there and a relatively small percentage of lawyers actually practice in this area.