External link to a directory of lawyers

I removed the link to lawyers.com. There are many online directories of attorneys using search engine optimization to battle for the top spot. I don't think linking to one of them helps this article at all. -- DS1953 ^talk 21:01, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

How to Find a Lawyer and How to find an Attorney There should be Wikipedia articles on each of these two topics with suggestions to contact the local bar association as well as the professional bar association which covers the type of problem (for example the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the American Bankruptcy Institute, etc). The Wikipedia articles should link to this Attorney-at-Law article and to the Lawyer article as well as to Wikipedia articles on Bankruptcy, Immigration, etc. Some consumers will need this sort of help. I would try to set these up myself but am too new here to do this. ````

No, that would be against a ton of Wikipedia policies. Wikipedia is purely descriptive ("this is how something is") not prescriptive ("this is what you should do"). See Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, Wikipedia:Verifiability, and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Wikibooks is where "how-to" stuff goes. --Coolcaesar 02:48, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Statistics on specialization and certification of specialties

I added some information on certification of specialists, using Texas as the example. One thing I am not sure of is: Of the 8,303 board certified specialists in Texas, are any considered inactive members of the Texas Bar ( i.e., are any part of the 11,000 inactive members, and not part of the approximately 77,000 active members)?

Also, for what it's worth, many thousands of the 77,000 active Texas Bar members are not currently engaged in the practice of law (i.e., they retain the active Texas Bar membership even though they're working in a field unrelated to law practice). Yours, Famspear 23:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I am cleaning up this pigpen today

This article has been getting worse and worse over the past two years since it was split off from a section I originally drafted in Lawyer (trace the history back to 2004 if you don't believe me). I am at the library this afternoon with a pile of excellent books on the American legal profession, so I'm going to start fixing it. With citations. -- Coolcaesar 23:48, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I am going to do a bit of fixing and cleaning myself, if you don't mind. I'm working on the WP:AR1 Legal articles project (se the Talk page under that rubric). Bearian 23:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to clean it up. I've been much too busy with depositions to finish cleaning up this mess. --Coolcaesar 18:53, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality

The phrase "Attorneys in private practice and small firms (who can't afford to litigate every little issue) v. big firms (who can)" is clearly POV in its wording. Tmrobertson 06:57, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

That's not POV; that's a cold economic fact. I will add a cite to one of the more pungent passages from Cameron Stracher's book Double Billing when I have the time. -- Coolcaesar 22:13, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

It is not the fact at all. Have you ever practiced law? You're basing this on some book? Furthermore, the bit about plaintiff's attorneys being only contingent is wrong. Who came up with this stuff????-- Davidwiz 20:23, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

You're implying that a statement based one's own practice of law would be better than something from a book. Wikipedia rules are just the opposite: an encyclopedia is not supposed to have first person research or expertise, but rather to bring together information from other authorities. To the extent that you think the information in this particular source is not settled fact, you should add a citation to an opposing source and document it as a controversy.

Please, please, please!! refrain to use the word "America" or "American" to make reference to the U.S.A. !!!, The U.S.A. is a country, but AMERICA is a continent that goes from Chile to Alaska...... the use of "America" for U.S. is only ignorance. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 137.52.242.224 (talk • contribs). (on 3 April 2007, USA central daylight time)

Dear anonymous user at IP 137.52.242.224: The word "American," like many words in many languages, has more than one correct meaning.

American [ . . . ] adj. 1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of the United States of America, its people, culture, government, or history. American Heritage Dictionary, p. 102 (2d Coll. Ed. 1985) ;

American adj [ . . . ] 2. of or relating to the U.S. or its possessions or original territory. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, p. 37 (8th ed. 1976);

American [ . . . ] adj. 1. of, in, or characteristic of the U.S., its people, etc. Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, p. 44 (2d Coll. Ed. 1970).

The word "American" is properly used world wide in business, in law, in commerce, in science, in religion, in education, in virtually every aspect of human communication, to refer to the United States of America, and things and concepts related to the United States of America, and nothing that you or I say or write in Wikipedia or anywhere else will ever change this. This is a discussion page for the article Attorney at Law. Let's stay on topic. Yours, Famspear 02:33, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

PS: For an article covering the controversy about the use of the word "American," see the article entitled (what else?) Use of the word American. Yours, Famspear 03:06, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I will be revising this article over the course of 2007

Now that I have got the Lawyer article mostly stabilized (with a few more minor issues to wrap up), I am thinking about cleaning up this article next.

Here are a few of my proposed changes:

• Move to Attorney-at-law, the more common term
• Research and footnote as many assertions as possible and delete all controversial assertions for which reliable, published sources are not readily available
• Move a lot of detail to Legal education in the United States
• Move a lot of detail to Juris Doctor
• Restructure the section on the job of an attorney to more accurately reflect the differences in workflow between litigators and transactional lawyers, and between junior associates versus senior associates, of counsel, and partners

Any one have a problem with these proposals? This will take me a few months. --Coolcaesar 07:20, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

These all sound like good ideas to me. I've been cleaning up a bit of the text drafting over the past day or so -- I think it needs a lot of work. I mean, frankly, something that is being drafted by lawyers should read like pristine text, and this isn't really there yet. Novaseeker 14:07, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

jdfg

at the begining cant it just simply say what an attorney basically is, i didnt know what one was and I went here but it didnt help. Can't it just say that if your too sick to make a decision then they do or what ever it is

It's a bit too complicated for that. The intro already summarizes an incredibly complex topic quite well (although some of the later paragraphs still need work). -- Coolcaesar 17:30, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Economic Position Of Attorneys Section Ignores Economics

This section is trying to say something about supply and demand, but seems to ignore the economic definition of supply and of demand as well as the Law of Supply And Demand. Since one of the statements is attributed to an ABA study, I assume there really is something to say here, but as it stands, it is gibberish, so I hope someone familiar with the facts can fix it.

The ABA said one third of demand wasn't met? Unless there are price caps I don't know about, the supply will always meet the demand. Maybe the ABA used some arbitrary criteria for of who deserves legal services and a third of those deserving couldn't afford it? Just guessing.

It also suggests that the fast-growing supply of lawyers to do high-priced legal services has caused a surplus of lawyers. Supply growing faster than demand cannot cause that all by itself; the market always clears in the long run. If there are large numbers of lawyers looking for work, it can only be due to the price not having adjusted itself yet -- i.e. those lawyers are erroneously still asking old-supply prices or the employers are erroneously assuming they have to pay old-supply prices. That's a temporary thing and the article should make that clear if that is in fact the situation.

Bryan Henderson 03:47, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Media Image section: not very encyclopedic

I don't like the Media Image section at all. I'd just delete most of it, but maybe it's just me, so I'll just describe my feelings toward it to add to those of others who may come later:

The section reads like cheerleading for the legal profession, and a defense to an imagined insult. Every line of it gives reasons to appreciate lawyers; nothing remotely critical of lawyers appears.

I don't agree that the media, in general, portrays lawyers as the section claims. Certainly some TV shows and movies do. Any generalization about how the media as a whole portrays lawyers cannot be factual enough to put here. If there were a citation to a respected authority, I might accept such a generalization.

People work hard in all professions, and entertainment shows misrepresent lots of them. People know that. There is nothing noteworthy in how hard an attorney's job is to justify space here.

Something that would be useful is simply an objective breakdown of what the job entails (and there is another section already for that). But not as a rebuttal to a nonspecific argument from somewhere in the media that the job is something else.

Bryan Henderson 04:05, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

"Trial attorneys (who argue the facts, such as Johnnie Cochran) v. appellate attorneys (who argue the law, such as David Boies)" Trial attys don't argue the law? wtf? They argue both. Facts are meaningless without THE LAW. Whoever wrote this is a moron-- not a lawyer.

I have finally started my long-planned rewrite project

After thinking about this for over a year, I have started my long-planned rewrite of this article. Like my successful rewrite of Lawyer, I am working on an extremely dramatic revision (preserving as much useful text as possible) on a temporary subarticle of my talk page. Then next I will dig up lots of sources so that practically ever assertion will be backed up by a reliable source. Then I will do a couple more revisions for style and then overwrite the entire article with my new version. Unfortunately, because I am also busy with dozens of other priorities (like taking depositions), my revision will probably take at least six months to complete. But this is to give everyone a heads-up so they know what's going on when the entire article gets replaced down the road. -- Coolcaesar 17:29, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Officially it's "attorney-at-law" with hyphens

...or so says Black's Law Dictionary. Anyone have a substantial reference that says otherwise? If nobody comes up with one for a few weeks, this entry should probably be moved to " Attorney-at-law". There is already a page of that title now, which had a redirect to "lawyer" instead of here - which is an even worse imprecision - I changed that one to redirect here in the meantime. - Reaverdrop 01:42, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I concur that the correct usage is with hyphens. I am also appalled at how bad the text of this article has become since someone split it off the Lawyer article (as anyone can see from the history of the Lawyer article, I originally drafted much of this text for that article). Now that I have thoroughly researched and rewritten Lawyer, I may have to fix this one next!

Here is what I am planning to do in a few weeks: (1) Change unlicensed practice of law to unauthorized practice of law, which is the dominant usage among professional responsibility experts; (2) Move all the U.S.-related stuff to Lawyers in the United States; (3) Move all the Indian-related stuff to Lawyers in India; and (4) rewrite this article as a very general and brief article about attorneys at law in general and how that usage died out in the U.K. and many Commonwealth nations (because the position of solicitor was seen as more prestigious) but became the dominant usage in the United States and several other nations where the legal profession fused early on. Anyone have any objections? -- Coolcaesar 01:01, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Deleted material regarding Juris Doctor

I have deleted language asserting that the Juris Doctor degree does not confer the title of "doctor." The article on Juris Doctor has been infected with this kind of material for some time. Let's leave it out of the article on Attorney at Law.

I'm going to make an assertion here: There is no such thing as a doctoral degree that does not confer the title of doctor. To state otherwise is in my opinion nonsensical. The edit wars on these kinds of things in the Juris Doctor or related articles detracts from the reliability and reputation of Wikipedia in my view. Let's keep this encyclopedic.

And let's keep edit wars about whether a particular doctoral degree "really" is or is not a doctoral degree out of the article on Attorney at Law. Please leave that battle -- if (sigh....) it has to be fought -- in some other place than in this article. Yours, Famspear 20:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

This is really just hatred against lawyers in the common law countries. In most civil law countries, it is commonly accepted that a lawyer is a "Doktor". In the US, it's the non-lawyer PhDs who resent the idea that U.S. lawyers, with their three years of grad school, have the same academic gravitas. I would bot object to including this in the entry. Excluding it seems to me to be an exercise is capitulation. Novaseeker 02:50, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

External link to a directory of lawyers

I removed the link to lawyers.com. There are many online directories of attorneys using search engine optimization to battle for the top spot. I don't think linking to one of them helps this article at all. -- DS1953 ^talk 21:01, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

How to Find a Lawyer and How to find an Attorney There should be Wikipedia articles on each of these two topics with suggestions to contact the local bar association as well as the professional bar association which covers the type of problem (for example the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the American Bankruptcy Institute, etc). The Wikipedia articles should link to this Attorney-at-Law article and to the Lawyer article as well as to Wikipedia articles on Bankruptcy, Immigration, etc. Some consumers will need this sort of help. I would try to set these up myself but am too new here to do this. ````

No, that would be against a ton of Wikipedia policies. Wikipedia is purely descriptive ("this is how something is") not prescriptive ("this is what you should do"). See Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, Wikipedia:Verifiability, and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Wikibooks is where "how-to" stuff goes. --Coolcaesar 02:48, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Statistics on specialization and certification of specialties

I added some information on certification of specialists, using Texas as the example. One thing I am not sure of is: Of the 8,303 board certified specialists in Texas, are any considered inactive members of the Texas Bar ( i.e., are any part of the 11,000 inactive members, and not part of the approximately 77,000 active members)?

Also, for what it's worth, many thousands of the 77,000 active Texas Bar members are not currently engaged in the practice of law (i.e., they retain the active Texas Bar membership even though they're working in a field unrelated to law practice). Yours, Famspear 23:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I am cleaning up this pigpen today

This article has been getting worse and worse over the past two years since it was split off from a section I originally drafted in Lawyer (trace the history back to 2004 if you don't believe me). I am at the library this afternoon with a pile of excellent books on the American legal profession, so I'm going to start fixing it. With citations. -- Coolcaesar 23:48, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I am going to do a bit of fixing and cleaning myself, if you don't mind. I'm working on the WP:AR1 Legal articles project (se the Talk page under that rubric). Bearian 23:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to clean it up. I've been much too busy with depositions to finish cleaning up this mess. --Coolcaesar 18:53, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality

The phrase "Attorneys in private practice and small firms (who can't afford to litigate every little issue) v. big firms (who can)" is clearly POV in its wording. Tmrobertson 06:57, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

That's not POV; that's a cold economic fact. I will add a cite to one of the more pungent passages from Cameron Stracher's book Double Billing when I have the time. -- Coolcaesar 22:13, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

It is not the fact at all. Have you ever practiced law? You're basing this on some book? Furthermore, the bit about plaintiff's attorneys being only contingent is wrong. Who came up with this stuff????-- Davidwiz 20:23, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

You're implying that a statement based one's own practice of law would be better than something from a book. Wikipedia rules are just the opposite: an encyclopedia is not supposed to have first person research or expertise, but rather to bring together information from other authorities. To the extent that you think the information in this particular source is not settled fact, you should add a citation to an opposing source and document it as a controversy.

====

Please, please, please!! refrain to use the word "America" or "American" to make reference to the U.S.A. !!!, The U.S.A. is a country, but AMERICA is a continent that goes from Chile to Alaska...... the use of "America" for U.S. is only ignorance. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 137.52.242.224 (talk • contribs). (on 3 April 2007, USA central daylight time)

Dear anonymous user at IP 137.52.242.224: The word "American," like many words in many languages, has more than one correct meaning.

American [ . . . ] adj. 1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of the United States of America, its people, culture, government, or history. American Heritage Dictionary, p. 102 (2d Coll. Ed. 1985) ;

American adj [ . . . ] 2. of or relating to the U.S. or its possessions or original territory. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, p. 37 (8th ed. 1976);

American [ . . . ] adj. 1. of, in, or characteristic of the U.S., its people, etc. Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, p. 44 (2d Coll. Ed. 1970).

The word "American" is properly used world wide in business, in law, in commerce, in science, in religion, in education, in virtually every aspect of human communication, to refer to the United States of America, and things and concepts related to the United States of America, and nothing that you or I say or write in Wikipedia or anywhere else will ever change this. This is a discussion page for the article Attorney at Law. Let's stay on topic. Yours, Famspear 02:33, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

PS: For an article covering the controversy about the use of the word "American," see the article entitled (what else?) Use of the word American. Yours, Famspear 03:06, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I will be revising this article over the course of 2007

Now that I have got the Lawyer article mostly stabilized (with a few more minor issues to wrap up), I am thinking about cleaning up this article next.

Here are a few of my proposed changes:

• Move to Attorney-at-law, the more common term
• Research and footnote as many assertions as possible and delete all controversial assertions for which reliable, published sources are not readily available
• Move a lot of detail to Legal education in the United States
• Move a lot of detail to Juris Doctor
• Restructure the section on the job of an attorney to more accurately reflect the differences in workflow between litigators and transactional lawyers, and between junior associates versus senior associates, of counsel, and partners

Any one have a problem with these proposals? This will take me a few months. --Coolcaesar 07:20, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

These all sound like good ideas to me. I've been cleaning up a bit of the text drafting over the past day or so -- I think it needs a lot of work. I mean, frankly, something that is being drafted by lawyers should read like pristine text, and this isn't really there yet. Novaseeker 14:07, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

jdfg

at the begining cant it just simply say what an attorney basically is, i didnt know what one was and I went here but it didnt help. Can't it just say that if your too sick to make a decision then they do or what ever it is

It's a bit too complicated for that. The intro already summarizes an incredibly complex topic quite well (although some of the later paragraphs still need work). -- Coolcaesar 17:30, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Economic Position Of Attorneys Section Ignores Economics

This section is trying to say something about supply and demand, but seems to ignore the economic definition of supply and of demand as well as the Law of Supply And Demand. Since one of the statements is attributed to an ABA study, I assume there really is something to say here, but as it stands, it is gibberish, so I hope someone familiar with the facts can fix it.

The ABA said one third of demand wasn't met? Unless there are price caps I don't know about, the supply will always meet the demand. Maybe the ABA used some arbitrary criteria for of who deserves legal services and a third of those deserving couldn't afford it? Just guessing.

It also suggests that the fast-growing supply of lawyers to do high-priced legal services has caused a surplus of lawyers. Supply growing faster than demand cannot cause that all by itself; the market always clears in the long run. If there are large numbers of lawyers looking for work, it can only be due to the price not having adjusted itself yet -- i.e. those lawyers are erroneously still asking old-supply prices or the employers are erroneously assuming they have to pay old-supply prices. That's a temporary thing and the article should make that clear if that is in fact the situation.

Bryan Henderson 03:47, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Media Image section: not very encyclopedic

I don't like the Media Image section at all. I'd just delete most of it, but maybe it's just me, so I'll just describe my feelings toward it to add to those of others who may come later:

The section reads like cheerleading for the legal profession, and a defense to an imagined insult. Every line of it gives reasons to appreciate lawyers; nothing remotely critical of lawyers appears.

I don't agree that the media, in general, portrays lawyers as the section claims. Certainly some TV shows and movies do. Any generalization about how the media as a whole portrays lawyers cannot be factual enough to put here. If there were a citation to a respected authority, I might accept such a generalization.

People work hard in all professions, and entertainment shows misrepresent lots of them. People know that. There is nothing noteworthy in how hard an attorney's job is to justify space here.

Something that would be useful is simply an objective breakdown of what the job entails (and there is another section already for that). But not as a rebuttal to a nonspecific argument from somewhere in the media that the job is something else.

Bryan Henderson 04:05, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

"Trial attorneys (who argue the facts, such as Johnnie Cochran) v. appellate attorneys (who argue the law, such as David Boies)" Trial attys don't argue the law? wtf? They argue both. Facts are meaningless without THE LAW. Whoever wrote this is a moron-- not a lawyer.

I have finally started my long-planned rewrite project

After thinking about this for over a year, I have started my long-planned rewrite of this article. Like my successful rewrite of Lawyer, I am working on an extremely dramatic revision (preserving as much useful text as possible) on a temporary subarticle of my talk page. Then next I will dig up lots of sources so that practically ever assertion will be backed up by a reliable source. Then I will do a couple more revisions for style and then overwrite the entire article with my new version. Unfortunately, because I am also busy with dozens of other priorities (like taking depositions), my revision will probably take at least six months to complete. But this is to give everyone a heads-up so they know what's going on when the entire article gets replaced down the road. -- Coolcaesar 17:29, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

The American legal system has a united (or fused) legal profession, and does not draw a distinction between lawyers who plead in court and those who do not. Many other common law jurisdictions, as well as some civil law jurisdictions, have a separation, such as the solicitor and barrister/advocate split in the United Kingdom and the advocate/civil law notary split in France. There is also no delegation of routine work to notaries public or their civil law equivalent in the American system.

Comparison: attorney-in-fact and attorney-at-law

Broadly speaking, an "attorney" is one who acts on behalf of another person in some capacity. An "attorney-in-fact" is akin to an agent who acts on behalf of another person, typically with respect to business, property, or personal matters. Such an agent does not have to be licensed to practice law and may not need to have any license at all.

By contrast an attorney-at-law, or lawyer, is a person trained and licensed by a relevant jurisdiction to practice law: to represent clients in legal matters and to give legal advice. In the United States, the term attorney, standing alone, generally refers to this meaning rather than "attorney-in-fact".

The term "attorney-in-fact" is mostly seen in the context of someone representing another person's interest in business negotiations or regarding signature pages on documents where the person signing is doing so on the basis of a power of attorney. The term power of attorney generally relates to an attorney-in-fact, not an attorney-at-law. Alternative titles for "power of attorney" type documents in non-U.S. jurisdictions include the French "Pouvoir" and the German "Vollmacht".

Comparison: attorney-at-law and Attorney General

The term Attorney General is used to designate the chief law enforcement officer of a state or other political jurisdiction. The attorney general is a lawyer who represents the government, prosecutes criminal cases, defends the government from lawsuits against it, and brings civil lawsuits to enforce consumer protection, antitrust, and other laws.

Comparison to older U.S. terminology and non-U.S. terminology

In common law jurisdictions outside the United States (e.g., England, Canada, Australia), attorney is incorrect as a general term, and lawyer or solicitor is used instead. However, in these areas, the specific terms crown attorney, power of attorney, and Attorney General, are used. In intellectual property, the term patent attorney is commonly used.

In earlier times, some states, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, maintained a divided legal profession, as can still be found in the United Kingdom, consisting of attorneys (who practised in courts of equity), solicitors (who practised in courts of law) and barristers, also known as counsel, whom solicitors and attorneys instructed to appear in the higher courts. In deference to this practice, when an attorney at law is admitted to practice in some states, his or her certificate of admission bears the title Attorney and Counsellor-at-Law in recognition of his inheritance of both of these roles.

Some attorneys use the post-nominal Esq., the abbreviated form of the word Esquire.

The job of an attorney

Once admitted to practice by the highest court of a state (a function sometimes administered by the state's bar association), an American attorney may file legal pleadings and argue cases in any court of that state (federal courts, usually require a separate admission), provide legal advice to clients, and draft important legal documents such as wills, trusts, deeds, and contracts.

In some states, real estate closings may be performed only by attorneys, even though the attorney's role in a closing may involve primarily notarization of documents and disbursement of settlement funds through an escrow account.

Practicing law includes interviewing a client to identify the legal question, analyzing the question, researching relevant law, devising legal solutions to problems, and executing such solutions through specific tasks such as drafting a contract or filing a motion with a court.

Most academic legal training is directed to identifying legal issues, researching facts and law, and arguing both the facts and law in favor of either side in any case.

Media images

Contrary to the media image of attorneys, a great deal of litigation and regulatory legal work is spent doing research in a law library or in an electronic database like Westlaw or LexisNexis. Few television programs and movies accurately portray the hours surrounded by a pile of books or printouts which form the core of the occupational life of many attorneys in these practice areas.

One occasional exception is the television program Law & Order, which sometimes shows the main characters researching at a computer late into the night (always using Westlaw, due to a contract between Westlaw and the show's producers). Some episodes also show lawyers keeping a small rack of clothes in their office for those times when research lasts all night and the character does not have time to go home to change.

Another notable portrayal of the profession was the series Murder One which focused on the lawyers (and the law office) as central characters. The Practice did as well, but its accuracy may be questionable.

Movies and television also generally show attorneys focused on a single case. Most litigators have many cases in progress at any given time. Each case has deadlines that must be carefully monitored and court dates which one must not forget.

In litigation, attorneys spend much time discovering the facts of the case to develop a "theory of the case" that integrates facts and law in a way most favorable to their client.

In addition, many attorneys specialize in activities that never involve them in litigation, such as writing legal opinion letters, advising clients, structuring business transactions, negotiating and drafting contracts, preparing tax strategies, or preparing and prosecuting filings with government agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the Patent and Trademark Office. Such attorneys rarely appear in court.

Many American attorneys limit their practices to specialized fields of law. Often dichotomies are drawn between different types of attorneys, but these are neither fixed nor formal lines. Examples include:

• Plaintiff v. Defense Attorneys (some attorneys do both plaintiff and defense work, others only handle certain types of cases, like personal injury, business, etc.)
• Transactional (or "office practice") attorneys (who negotiate and draft documents and advise clients, rarely going to court) v. litigators (who advise clients in the context of legal disputes both in and out of court, including lawsuits, arbitrations and negotiated settlements)
• Trial attorneys (who argue the facts, such as Johnnie Cochran) v. appellate attorneys (who argue the law, such as David Boies)
• Outside counsel (law firms) v. in-house counsel (corporate legal department)

Despite these descriptions, most states forbid or discourage claims of specialization in particular areas of law unless the attorney has been certified by his or her state bar [1] or state board of legal specialization. Other states allow indirect indications of specialization (in forms of advertisements such as "our practice is limited to . . .") but require that the lawyer state that he or she is not certified by a state board of legal specialization in the advertised practice area. Patent attorneys are allowed to advertise their specialization in all jurisdictions, since registration for patent law is administered by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) instead of a state-level body.

Some states grant formal certifications recognizing specialties. In California, for example, bar certification is offered in family law, appellate practice, criminal law, bankruptcy, estate planning, immigration, taxation and workmen's compensation. Any attorney meeting the bar requirements in one of these fields may represent himself as a specialist. Similarly, Texas formally grants certification of specialization in the following fields: administrative law; business bankruptcy law; civil appellate law; civil trial law; consumer bankruptcy law; consumer & commercial law; criminal law; estate planning & probate law; family law; health law; immigration & nationality law; juvenile law; labor & employment law; oil, gas & mineral law; personal injury trial law; real estate law; tax law; and workers' compensation law. [2]

The vast majority of lawyers practicing in a particular field may typically not be certified as specialists in that field (and state board certification is not generally required to practice law in any field). For example, the State Bar of Texas (as of mid 2006) reported 77,056 persons licensed as attorneys in that state (excluding inactive members of the Bar) ^[1], while the Texas Board of Legal Specialization reported, at about the same time, only 8,303 Texas attorneys who were board certified in any specialty. [3] Indeed, of the 8,303 certified specialists in Texas, the highest number of attorneys certified in one specific field at that time was 1,775 (in personal injury trial law). Despite the relative large number of lawyers that presumably would handle divorce, adoption and child custody matters, Texas reported that of 77,056 attorneys, only 697 in the entire state were certified in family law (which is, arguably, the applicable specialty).

Specialization in patent law is administered by the Office of Enrollment and Discipline of the USPTO, which imposes stringent requirements for applicants to become registered as patent attorneys or patent agents.

About half of American attorneys work solo or in small firms^{[ citation needed]}. See law firm. There are also many midsize firms, with anywhere from 50 to 200 attorneys, and since the 1970s, some law firms have merged to form giant "megafirms" with 1,000 attorneys or more.

Control of cases

An American attorney licensed in each applicable court may in a few cases control and argue his or her case at each level of the judiciary through its entire lifecycle. A notable example of this is the Brown v. Board of Education litigation, where the same trial team handled the case from start to finish at the U.S. Supreme Court. However, cases which advance to the appellate level, particularly to the U.S. Supreme Court, are often re-assigned to experienced appellate practitioners or firms.

Education and training

Main article: Legal education in the United States

Almost all U.S. jurisdictions require successful completion of a bar exam to be licensed as an attorney. All but a few of those states which require a bar exam also require the applicant to have taken a degree in professional law from an accredited law school. Most require it to be an American professional doctorate in law. A few states accept foreign law degrees. In addition to this formal education, attorneys in most jurisdictions must complete regular Continuing Legal Education (CLE) requirements.

The State of Washington has a separate Law Clerk program under Rule Six of the Washington Court Admission to Practice Rules. A college graduate of good moral character may be accepted into the four-year Rule Six Law Clerk program, obtain employment in a law firm or with a judge for at least 30 hours a week, and study a proscribed Course of Study under a tutor. After successful completion of the Rule Six Law Clerk program, a law clerk may take the Washington State Bar Exam and, upon passing, will be admitted as an attorney into the Washington State Bar Association.

The degree earned by prospective attorneys in the United States is generally a Juris Doctor (J.D.), or Doctor of Jurisprudence. Historically, law was an undergraduate subject in the United States, as it still is in most other Anglophone countries, for which the LL.B. (Bachelor of Laws) or other undergraduate degree (e.g., Cambridge awards the 'Bachelor of Arts in Law' or B.A.L.) was conferred. This undergraduate degree was followed by the LL.M. or Master of Laws and, where the LL.B. is still awarded, the highest degree is often still the LL.D. or Doctor of Laws. In the United States, however, the LL.B. was elevated to the graduate school curriculum starting in 1896 (Harvard), as a second Bachelor's degree; and then replaced by the professional doctorate in law - the J.D. or D.Jur. (when the degree is conferred in English) starting in 1902 (University of Chicago). By the end of the twentieth century, all ABA-accredited American law schools had replaced the LL.B. with the J.D./D.Jur.

The content of the J.D./D.Jur. curriculum is substantially the same as for a LL.B. curriculum, except that study for the doctoral level degree builds upon prior undergraduate education whereas the LL.B. is still an undergraduate degree, even in those few countries where it is conferred at graduate level as a second Bachelor's degree. As a professional doctorate, people who hold the J.D./D.Jur. are fully entitled to call themselves "Doctor," though most do not bother. The label "doctor" is an academic tradition, but the tradition in the American legal profession is to call all attorneys "Mr." or "Ms." regardless of their academic qualifications. A litigator with a Ph.D., a M.D., an Ed.D., a Psy.D., as well as a J.D. would still be addressed "Mr." or "Ms." while she or he was making an oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The LL.M., however, continues to be offered in the United States, sometimes as a type of specialist post-doctoral degree and sometimes as a legal Master's degree in U.S. law for non-U.S. educated attorneys with the LL.B. or other non-U.S. law degree. Many non-U.S. lawyers who have an LL.B. or other non-U.S. law degree come to study in the United States to obtain an LL.M. degree in comparative law, in order to familiarize themselves with U.S. common law, and to enable themselves to take the bar exam in New York or California, both of which allow foreign attorneys with such degrees to take the exam. Some of these lawyers end up practicing law in the U.S., while many of them return to their home countries and use their U.S. LL.M. and bar admission as a gateway to advising international clients. Among U.S. lawyers, the most common use of the LL.M. degree currently is to acquire an advanced level of expertise in a specific legal discipline, such as tax law. American law schools are very slowly beginning to address the situation of advanced academic law degrees by creating explicitly post-doctoral degrees, like the S.J.D. or J.S.D. (Scientiae Juris Doctor or Doctor of the Science of Law).

The Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University in the U.S. now offers a joint J.D. (Juris Doctor) / B.C.L. ( Bachelor of Civil Law) over 7 semesters (instead of its previous 6-semester program for the J.D. alone) in recognition of the increased Louisiana civil law component of the new program.

The highest law degree obtainable in the United States is the S.J.D., or Scientum Juris Doctor, literally "doctor of juridical science". This degree is also known by the abbreviation J.S.D. at some U.S . schools, e.g. NYU Law School and Columbia Law School. The degree should not be confused with the "doctor of laws" degree, or LL.D., which is usually, but not always, awarded for honorary purposes.

The S.J.D. or J.S.D. degree is very rarely awarded, and is generally only sought by attorneys holding exceptional credentials and a desire to enter legal academia. The degree is generally only offered at the very top law schools, which typically accept only 4 or 5 students into their program each year. Admission is limited to those who have achieved their J.D. and LL.M. degrees with distinction. Successful applicants usually have already published significant scholarly legal articles in their proposed area of study, and many have legal teaching experience prior to entering the program.

Law students in court

Some courts allow law students to act as "certified student attorneys" after the satisfactory completion of their first year of law school and the completion of particular second- and third-year courses with subjects such as evidence. Many states allow students to argue in front of a court as a certified legal intern (CLI), provided they meet certain prerequisites, such as having completed at least half of their law education, having taken or be taking the law school's ethics class, and being under the supervision of a qualified and licensed attorney.

This concept was somewhat misrepresented in the movie Legally Blonde, where the protagonist Elle argues before a jury. Although Elle was under the supervision of an attorney, no state would allow a student still completing the first year of law to argue a case in court. However, it is reminiscent of "teen court" programs that are expanding around the USA. In these programs, it is not law students, but high school students, that argue cases before a judge and sit on juries to decide penalties to other high school students who have agreed to be tried by the teen court in exchange for bypassing the regular court and having no criminal record created in the process, even if they are found responsible for a crime by the teen court. The punishment often includes community service, including sitting on juries in upcoming cases.

Illinois: The 711 license

In Illinois a student currently in good standing who has earned credits that represent at least three-fifths of the credits required for graduation may be eligible for a 711 license (based on Illinois Supreme Court Rule 711). A 711 license allows a student to: (1) Counsel with clients, negotiate in the settlement of claims, and engage in the preparation and drafting of legal instruments. (2) Appear in the trial courts and administrative tribunals subject to the following qualifications: (i) Appearances, pleadings, motions, and other documents to be filed with the court may be prepared by the student or graduate and may be signed by him with the accompanying designation "Senior Law Student" or "Law Graduate" but must also be signed by the supervising member of the bar. (ii) In criminal cases, in which the penalty may be imprisonment, in proceedings challenging sentences of imprisonment, and in civil or criminal contempt proceedings, the student or graduate may participate in pretrial, trial, and posttrial proceedings as an assistant of the supervising member of the bar, who shall be present and responsible for the conduct of the proceedings. (iii) In all other civil and criminal cases the student or graduate may conduct all pretrial, trial, and posttrial proceedings, and the supervising member of the bar need not be present. (3) He/She may prepare briefs, excerpts from the record, abstracts, and other documents filed in courts of review of the State, which may set forth the name of the student or graduate with the accompanying designation "Senior Law Student" or "Law Graduate" but must be filed in the name of the supervising member of the bar.

A JD graduate of the College of Law may qualify for a 711 license if s/he (1) has not yet had an opportunity to take the first Bar examination scheduled after s/he graduates, or (2) has taken the Bar exam but has not received the results, or (3) has taken and passed the Bar examination but has not yet been sworn in as a member of the Illinois bar.

A 711 license is not available for a student working for a private law firm. The license is available for work with (1) a legal aid bureau, legal assistance program, organization or clinic chartered by the State of Illinois or approved by a law school approved by the American Bar Association. (2) the Office of the Public Defender, or (3) a law office of the State or any of its subdivisions.

Unlicensed practice of law

Some states provide criminal penalties for (1) falsely holding oneself out to the public as a lawyer, and (2) the unauthorized practice of law by a non-lawyer.

A person who has a J.D. degree but is not admitted to a state bar is not a lawyer, and cannot legally engage in the practice of law. In most states, even the practice of law by an "out-of-state" lawyer is considered the unauthorized practice of law within that state. Exceptions are sometimes made when the out-of-state lawyer is permitted temporarily to practice within the state pro hac vice or in some cases as in-house counsel for corporations.

In addition, a few areas of law, such as patent law, are mandated by the U.S. Constitution to be strictly under federal jurisdiction. In this case, state courts and bar associations are not allowed to restrict the practice of that field of law, and a patent attorney may freely advise clients as to patent matters anywhere in the jurisdiction of the United States with impunity, without regard to state court or bar association rules. Furthermore, prior to November 15, 1938, individuals could become registered as "patent attorneys" with the PTO without ever passing a state bar exam or going to law school. That status was grandfathered for patent attorneys registered prior to that date. This represents a holdover to the traditional meaning of the term "attorney" as "agent" or "attorney-in-fact". There are still some living patent attorneys who became registered as patent attorneys before that date, as far back as 1934. Today, a non-lawyer can take and pass the patent bar , but he or she would be considered a patent agent.

In some jurisdictions, the definition of the practice of law is quite strict; persons have been successfully prosecuted for publishing do-it-yourself will forms and for representing special education children in federal proceedings as specifically allowed by federal law.

Paradoxically, some jurisdictions will allow a non-attorney to sit as a judge, usually in lower courts or in hearings by governmental agencies, even though a non-attorney may not practice before these same courts. Similarly, in a jurisdiction where a judge is elected by the people, the judge often need to be licensed to practice law or trained in any particular way. Likewise, the U.S. Constitution does not provide any such requirement for a U.S. Supreme Court justice or other federal judge, although no non-lawyer has ever been appointed as a federal judge.

American attorneys' attire

Unlike their counterparts in other common law jurisdictions, American attorneys are not required to wear wigs, robes or any other items of court dress when they appear in court. They are expected to wear contemporary business suits.

The one exception is the United States Solicitor General, who traditionally argues before the U.S. Supreme Court in 19th-century attire, including a "morning coat" with tails.

Attorneys in the United States do not usually have to adhere to a strict color code garb and can argue their cases wearing business suits. However, judges in the United States and Canada have occasionally been reported, even very recently, to order that a lawyer is not dressed appropriately and must return at a later date in proper attire – and to issue the lawyer a fine as if the lawyer had failed to show up for the hearing. ^[2]

Alternatives to the practice of law

Because an accredited legal education generally provides a strong understanding of not only the substance of the law, but also an advanced analytical approach to the use and ramifications of the law, many professions, other than the practice of law, promote or require those with legal educations. As a result of overcrowding in the legal profession, the desire to achieve better work/life balance, and disenchantment with the legal profession, many attorneys are leaving the Bar to pursue these other professions that take advantage of the attorney's legal education. In some instances, graduates of law school who either cannot be admitted or who decide not to bother to be admitted to a state bar, enter these various professions.

Alternative careers that seek legally educated employees include:

• Work with the government as a policy analyst or a legislative drafter (the latter is sometimes classified as a 'policy analyst' and sometimes as a 'lawyer');
• Work for a publisher of a legal information publication;
• Work in banking, finance, real estate,