A lawyer is a person learned in law. A lawyer, also known as an attor-ney, a counselor, a solicitor, a barrister or an advocate, is an individual licensed by the state to engage in the practice of law and advise clients on legal matters. Lawyers act as both advocates and advisors on behalf of their clients.
The role of the lawyer varies significantly across legal jurisdictions, and therefore can be treated in only the most general terms. Lawyers roles vary greatly, depending upon their practice environment and field of specializa-tion.
In most countries there is only one legal profession. This means that all the lawyers have roughly the same professional education leading to the same legal qualifications, and they are permitted to do all the legal work.
In England the system is different. Here the profession is divided into two types of lawyers, called solicitors and barristers. Solicitors and barristers are both qualified lawyers, but they have different legal training; they take different examinations to qualify; and once they have qualified, they usually do different types of legal work.
Many solicitors deal with a range of legal work: preparing cases to be tried in the civil or criminal courts; giving legal advice in the field of business and drawing up contracts; making all the legal arrangements for the buying and selling of land or houses; assisting employees and employers; making wills.
Barristers are mainly courtroom lawyers who actually conduct cases in court. Unlike solicitors, they have rights of audience (rights to appear) in any court of the land, and so barristers are those lawyers who appear in the more difficult cases in the higher courts.
The educational requirements to becoming a lawyer vary greatly from country to country. In some countries, law is taught by a faculty of law, which is a department of a universitys general undergraduate college. Law students in those countries pursue a Bachelor (LLB) or a Master (LLM) of Laws degree. In some countries it is common or even required for students to earn another bachelors degree at the same time. Besides it is often followed by a series of advanced examinations, apprenticeships, and additional coursework at special government institutes. In other countries, particularly the United States, law is primarily taught at law
schools. Most law schools are part of universities but a few are indepen-dent institutions. Law schools in the United States (and some in Canada and elsewhere) award graduating students a J.D. (Juris Doctor/Doctor of Jurisprudence) as the practitioners law degree (a professional degree). However, like other professional doctorates, the J.D. is not the exact equivalent of the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), a university degree of the highest level, since it does not require the submission of a full disser-tation based on original research.
The methods and quality of legal education vary widely. Some countries require extensive clinical training in the form of apprenticeships or special clinical courses. Many others have only lectures on highly abstract legal doctrines, which force young lawyers to figure out how to actually think and write like a lawyer at their first apprenticeship (or job).
In most common law countries lawyers have many options over the course of their careers. Besides private practice, they can always aspire to becoming a prosecutor, government counsel, corporate in-house counsel, judge, arbitrator, law professor, or politician.
In most civil law countries, lawyers generally structure their legal educa-tion around their chosen specialty; the boundaries between different types of lawyers are carefully defined and hard to cross. After one earns a law de-gree, career mobility may be severely constrained.
