Solicitors
There are about 50000 solicitors, a number which is rapidly increasing, and they make up by far the largest branch of the legal profession in England and Wales. They are found in every town, where they deal with all the day-to-day work of preparing legal documents for buying and selling houses, making wills, etc. Solicitors also work on court cases for their clients, prepare cases for barristers to present in the higher courts, and may represent their client in a Magistrates court.
Barristers
There are about 5000 barristers who defend or prosecute in the higher courts. Although solicitor and barristers work together on cases, barristers specialize in representing clients in court and the training and career structures for the two types of lawyer are quite separate. In court, barristers wear wigs and gowns in keeping with the extreme formality of the proceedings. The highest level of barristers have the title QC (Queens Counsel).
Judges
There are a few hundred judges, trained as barristers, who preside in more serious cases. There is no separate training for judges.
Jury
A jury consist of twelve people (Jurors), who are ordinary people chosen at random from the Electoral Register (the list of people who can vote in elections). The jury listen to the evidence given in court in certain criminal cases and decide whether the defendant is guilty or innocent. If the person is found guilty, the punishment is passed by the presiding judge. Juries are rarely used in civil cases.
Magistrates
There are about 30000 magistrates (Justices of the Peace or JPs), who judge cases in the lower courts. There are usually unpaid and have no formal legal qualifications, but they are respectable people who are given some training.
Coroners
Coroners have medical or legal training (or both), and inquire into violent or unnatural deaths.
Prosecutor
Is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the case in a criminal trial against an individual accused of breaking the law.
Civil-law notaries, or Latin notaries
Lawyers of non-contentious private civil law who draft, take, and record legal instruments for private parties, provide legal advice and give attendance in person, and are vested as public officers with the authentication power of the State. Unlike notaries public, their common-law counterparts, civil-law notaries are highly trained, licensed practitioners providing a full range of regulated legal services, and whereas they hold a public office, they nonetheless operate usually—but not always—in private practice and are paid on a fee-for-service basis. They often receive the same education as attorneys at civil law but without qualifications in advocacy, procedural law, or the law of evidence, somewhat comparable to solicitor training in certain common-law countries.
Attorney may refer to:
- Lawyer, a synonym for attorney, in most uses
- Attorney at law, the title of a lawyer in some countries
- Attorney general, the principal legal adviser to a government
- Power of attorney, the power of a person, who may be but is not necessarily a lawyer, to act on someone else's behalf
- Attorney-in-fact, a person who holds the power of attorney
Attorney at law or attorney-at-law
Usually abbreviated in everyday speech to attorney, is the official name for a lawyer in certain jurisdictions, including Japan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Brazil and the United States.
The District Attorney (DA)
In many jurisdictions in the United States, is the elected or appointed official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the legal department of the jurisdiction – generally the county in the U.S. – and supervises a staff of assistant (ADA) or deputy district attorneys. Depending on the system in place, district attorneys may be appointed by the chief executive of the region or elected by the voters of the jurisdiction.
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement, public prosecutions or even ministerial responsibility for legal affairs generally.
