Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

As with most people who post on LawGuru that they "know" something, you are mistaken. Although you are correct that lawyers pretty much always gravitate and stick to certain areas of the law, how narrow or widely the practice varies greatly from lawyer to lawyer, and there is no actual limitation on what type of law a lawyer may practice, provided they can do it competently, either by virtue of their existing legal knowledge, legal knowledge they can acquire from study and research, and/or knowledge they can acquire by consulting or associating with other attorneys with the requisite knowledge.

You are also mistaken in your apparent belief that an attorney may charge opposing counsel fees. Other than as sanctions for misconduct, one attorney never pays fees to opposing counsel. In some cases the losing PARTY is ordered to pay the other PARTY for the attorneys fees incurred in winning the case, but even that is the exception, not the norm. The normal rule is that each side bears their own attorneys fees.

But for the sake of completeness in addressing your question, let's say in an employment case one party managed to prevail on some cause of action that would entitle them to recover attorneys fees, and the other party was ordered to pay the fees. In that situation, because of the rule I started out by explaining, that you can take any kind of case if you can acquire the necessary expertise, the basic answer is "yes" the attorney who mostly does bankruptcy can include his own fees and those of an employment attorney he brings in to help with the case.

HOWEVER, the court does not just automatically award whatever is billed. To recover attorneys fees, once you win a case that entitles you to them, you still must submit an application to the court to establish the amount of fees and costs to be paid. The court then makes a determination of what is a REASONABLE fee. If the bankruptcy attorney's fees with the employment attorney's fees included are substantially higher than they would be had the case simply been referred to an employment attorney, then the court will discount the fees to a reasonable amount when making the final award of fees to be reimbursed.