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Essentially, 'practice areas' are categories used to divide the different types of work lawyers do, while sectors refer to the different types of economic activity the work of law firm relates to.

Thus, practice areas are separated between:

• Transactional practice areas (like corporate M&A, PE, finance, capital markets) - where the type of legal services offered by a firm are the ones required to complete a commercial deal.
• Advisory practice areas (like competition, IP, tax, employment) - where the type of legal service is advice on compliance with a particular (and normally quite complex) legal field .
• Contentious practice areas (like commercial litigation, ADR, international arbitration, white-collar crime) - where the type of legal service is what relates to the resolution of a dispute.

While sectors include:

• Technology
• Pharmaceuticals
• Energy
• Entertainment
• Telecommunications
• Transportation
• Retail

In practice, any practice area at a big law firm will include working for clients operating in multiple sectors of the economy. However, some firms choose to pursue a sector-expertise oriented strategy, in that they will construct their teams and build up their practices with a view to being very well-placed to service a particular class of clients (such as V&E has done for energy clients, or Bird & Bird for tech clients).