在家庭和少年法领域执业的律师经常让他们的客户感到最苦恼：他们代表失去对子女的监护权的父母（国家或另一父母），被逮捕并受到起诉的子女作为犯罪者，或担心长者亲戚继续照顾自己的能力的家庭-仅举几个常见问题。但是，这些律师在办理收养手续时，或帮助同性（或不育）夫妇为人工繁殖提供法律安排时，或在解决上述令人发指的问题之一时，也能帮助客户获得极大的快乐。家庭律师和未成年律师必须精通实体法和许多不同法院的程序规则，擅长为客户提供咨询服务，这些客户应有足够的情感，能够在非常高风险的事项上谈判有利的解决方案，并经常在庭审律
Attorneys who practice in the area of family and juvenile law frequently see their clients at their most distressed: they represent parents who have lost custody of their children (to the state or to the other parent), children who have been arrested and are being prosecuted as delinquents, or families who are worried about an elderly relative's ability to continue caring for herself -- to name just a few common issues. But these lawyers also help clients achieve great joy, when handling an adoption, or helping a same-sex (or infertile) couple make legal arrangements for artificial reproduction, or upon resolving one of the aforementioned distress-provoking matters. Family and juvenile lawyers must be fluent in substantive law and the procedural rules of many different courts, adept at counseling clients who can be justifiably quite emotional, skilled at negotiating favorable resolutions in extraordinarily high-stakes matters, and comfortable with trial lawyering, often in a context of great uncertainty.