|
An attorney at law (or attorney-at-law) in the United States is a practitioner in a court of law who is legally qualified to prosecute and defend actions in such court on the retainer of clients. Alternative terms include counselor (or counsellor-at-law) and lawyer.〔(Merriam-Webster Online )〕 As of April 2011, there were 1,225,452 licensed attorneys in the United States. A 2012 survey conducted by LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell determined 58 million consumers in the U.S. sought an attorney in the last year and that 76 percent of consumers used the Internet to search for an attorney. The United States legal system does not draw a distinction between lawyers who plead in court and those who do not, unlike many other common law jurisdictions (such as those of the United Kingdom which distinguishes between solicitors who do not plead in court and the barristers of the English & Welsh system and advocates of the Scottish system who do plead in court), and civil law jurisdictions (such as Italy and France, which distinguish between advocates and civil law notaries). An additional factor which differentiates the American legal system from other countries is that there is no delegation of routine work to notaries public. Attorneys may be addressed by the post-nominal letters Esq., the abbreviated form of the word Esquire. ==Specialization== Many American attorneys limit their practices to specialized fields of law. Often dichotomies are drawn between different types of attorneys, but, with the exception of patent law practice, these are neither fixed nor formal lines. Examples include: * Outside counsel (law firms) v. in-house counsel (corporate legal department) * 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 the late Johnnie Cochran) v. appellate attorneys (who argue the law, such as David Boies) Despite these descriptions, some states forbid or discourage claims of specialization in particular areas of law unless the attorney has been certified by his or her state bar or state board of legal specialization. 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 workers' compensation. Any attorney meeting the bar requirements in one of these fields may represent himself as a specialist. The State Bar of Texas, for example, formally grants certification of specialization in 21 select areas of law.〔(Texas Board of Legal Specialization (TBLS) )〕 The 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),〔See factsheet entitled "State Bar of Texas Facts," from www.texasbar.com.〕 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.〔(TBLS FAQs )〕 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). Specialization in patent law is administered by the Office of Enrollment and Discipline of the US Patent and Trademark Office, which imposes stringent requirements for applicants to become registered as patent attorneys or patent agents. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Attorneys in the United States」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|