Talk:Lawyer/archive1

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Contents

Definition

Just so things don't get more buried, I wanted to see if we can tidy up the headline definition. At the moment we have:

A lawyer, or legal practitioner, is a person certified to give legal advice who advises clients in legal matters. Some lawyers represent clients in courts of law and in other forms of dispute resolution.

This is, as I have tried to say, very much US POV. Most jurisdictions have no concept of "certification" to give legal advice, and there is no control of so doing. Apparently there is in the US (how odd). Anyway, I am happy with an article trying to look at a coherent concept -- such as a member of a legal profession -- and don't have any big deal with (eg) judges or legislators not being included here. That's fine. Its just the definition is nonsense in many places. Coolcaesar has hinted at some better definition -- to do with practising law -- can we put something better together (or I will try and get shouted at no doubt). Francis Davey 18:55, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I fully concur with you that we need to have a definition that focuses on the practice of law as opposed to legal advice. Also, the American term is "licensing." I just traced the article history and it was User:B40tu who changed the wording from "qualified" to "certified" in mid-August at this edit. [1] It was User:Pce3@ij.net who first inserted the reference to legal advice on April 12. [2] He has now been permanently blocked. [3]
How about going to something like "a person qualified to practice law"? Or if you have a better idea for the article's lead, feel free to present it. --Coolcaesar 09:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Monopoly?

Could someone do some more research on the legal monopoly? Coolcaesar (who has done sterling work on this page) has put reference to an "1804 law" which seems to be the origin of the monopoly. Can a reference be supplied. I have had a browse through the statute book of 1804 and see nothing directly on point. Francis Davey 17:33, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's directly from the book by Stevens (the leading scholar on the history of American law schools) and Abel-Smith. If I recall correctly (I'm not in the public library right now), they cited the minutes of an 1804 Law Society meeting as published in the Law Society's Gazette as well as several older books from the 19th century on the history of solicitors. Apparently the Law Society had been sending delegations regularly to the Prime Minister since the early 1780s begging for relief from the special taxes. These included the stamp tax as well as several taxes levied directly upon the licenses of both solicitors and attorneys (who apparently existed in England alongside solicitors as late as the 1830s). When William Pitt the Younger was thinking about raising the taxes again in 1804, the Law Society went to him with the idea of getting a monopoly on conveyancing, Pitt refused to back off on raising license taxes but agreed to the proposed monopoly, and the Law Society immediately drafted a bill for Parliament's consideration at its next meeting. Unfortunately, I don't recall seeing a reference to a particular Act of Parliament, though.--Coolcaesar 20:03, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Section 14 Stamp Act 1804 (I missed it on the first pass). I really hate writers who say "a law of...", since they all have unique citations and its usually a mealy mouthed way of saying they don't know, or can't be bothered to do the research. All the references I consulted failed to give me a citation, so I had to search the statutes for it. I've toned down the "outraged" remark, since that seems to be overly strong (or possibly one historical POV) though it clearly was a quid pro quo. I thought "solicitors and attorneys" was a little odd, since they are now both the same profession, but other professions (such as barristers and notaries) were included under the Stamp Act, so I have made some mods. Francis Davey 20:45, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

French fusion?

I wonder if the reference to the French fusion of its jurists can be checked? Reading the French wikipedia seems to suggest (a) that Notaire and Avocat are separate; and (b) makes me suspect that there might be different rules for advocates before administative courts. Francis Davey 19:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I can't read French (I studied Latin), but that's what I got from the more recent essay by Anne Boigeol in the 2003 book by Friedman (as is currently cited). Apparently the conseil juridiques still existed in 1985 when her first essay was published in Abel's book, but then were merged with the avocats in 1991 according to her 2003 essay. Of course, Boigeol is a sociologist, not an avocat (see her personal Web page at [4]), so it's possible that as an outsider she may have misunderstood what exactly happened in 1991 and then her essays were further distorted during translation into English (both of her essays in English were translated from original drafts in French).
The basic problem is that there are very few law professors like Richard Abel or Rogelio Perez-Perdomo who are able to provide a sophisticated sociological analysis of the legal profession as insiders. I mean people who are properly law-trained but then can step back and analyze the profession with the appropriate sociological methods. It's a very small field and nearly all the law professors who specialize in it are in the United States. In the preface to the Abel-Smith and Stevens book which I read yesterday at the library, the authors note that their analysis in 1967 was the first attempt ever at a systematic sociological analysis of the English legal system, including the English legal professions. They were horrified to find that the raw statistical data available from the Law Society and the Bar Council was quite poor in quality compared to data already regularly maintained by most American bar associations in the 1960s.
The problem is that sociology of the professions, in general, has been and is primarily an American project. The American Bar Foundation funded pioneering studies on the American legal profession in the 1950s, but the first large-scale studies of other countries' legal professions started occurring only in the 1970s thanks to Stanford Law School (this story is told in the preface to Friedman's book). Many of the essays in Friedman's and Abel's books were written by practicing lawyers or sociologists, and the quality suffers as a result, since they couldn't always find a law professor who was capable of doing a proper sociological analysis.
What we really need is a French avocat who can cite to materials in their own language (and probably available only in France) to correct the article (if it is incorrect) and then modify the footnotes to indicate that Boigeol has indicated the opposite but her analysis is wrong. --Coolcaesar 20:28, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Lawyers did go through several fusions in France. First avocats and avoues in 1971 followed by avocats and conseils juridiques in 1990. The resulting profession is called "avocat". The professions of huissier de justice and notaire remain separate. Lawyers need to take a separate exam in order to gain rights of audience before the supreme courts (Conseil d'Etat for public law and Cour de Cassation for private law). These avocats are called "avocats au conseil" as opposed to "avocats a la cour" (who cannot go further than the cour d'appel). Sprotch 13:51, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

You cannot become a lawyer in Arizona without attending an ABA-certified law school

Quit reverting to the old page. One cannot practice law in this state w/o, in addition to passing the bar exam, first graduating from a (certified) law school! -- Joe

Law is helping so therefore, anyone should be able to do it. Not anyone they should know what there doing. The world should have many more honest lawyers.

What is a lawyer?

There's a POV problem with this article. In my jurisidiction England and Wales there isn't, quite, the notion of a "lawyer" that seems to be being used in this article. This is illustrated by the recent deletion of reference to judgers, legislators etc.

Now it is usual to refer to people who do legal work -- such as drafting legislation, working as clerks of the court or judges and so on -- as "lawyers", since they are legally qualified and their work is concerned with the law. They are frequently not solicitors, barristers, legal executives or a member of one of the more specialised legal professions.

The problem appears to arise from the US POV where there is in general some notion of "giving legal advice" which one is not supposed to do if one is not a "lawyer" and therefore the term "lawyer" has to be defined restrictively. That is not really how things work here where "lawyer" is a loose non-technical term. Francis Davey 08:58, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

That's an interesting difference and one that I was unaware of even after reading all those books and articles I cited in the article (the difference was probably edited out by helpful American editors trying to make their books more accessible to American lawyers). In the United States, we do not refer to legislators, legislative aides, law clerks, or judges as lawyers when they are working in those other capacities. In fact, our professional responsibility rules are quite clear that a judge cannot practice as a lawyer while serving on the bench. By taking the oath and putting on the robe, he becomes a judge and loses his status as a lawyer. Then when he retires and goes back into private practice, he becomes a lawyer again. Similarly, a law clerk cannot practice law while working for a judge. And so on.
It sounds like what you're saying is that the term as used in England and Wales is comparable to the broad civil law term "jurist" and that it refers to anyone who's law-trained. Now that I'm aware of the difference, I'll start looking for sources that explain it and planning a rewrite of the first few paragraphs. Of course, if you know of any books in England that explain the difference and could provide a citation to a specific page, that would be helpful. --Coolcaesar 16:44, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I think the difficulty is that "lawyer" doesn't have a precise meaning in England and Wales and this is, in turn, because it doesn't matter very much. Since we don't have any legally defined notion of "practicing law", the concept never has to be sharpened. I suspect that "lawyer" is a rather fuzzy-edged concept here. The sharp concepts are the professions, such as "solicitor" or "barrister", and it is pretty clear when someone is a member of one of those professions and whether they are, or are not, acting within the compass of their profession by their profession's rules. Francis Davey 19:15, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Actually, the more I think about it, I'll take your word for it for now and adjust the article to indicate the dialect difference but I'll keep looking for a source to back this up. --Coolcaesar 16:10, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Canada

There's a slight mistake with regards to the legal profession in Canada. To be clear, in order to practice law in Quebec you need a BCL. In the rest of Canada you need an LLB. Its true that McGill University (Located in Montreal, Quebec) offers a joint LLB/BCL programme. However it should be understood that ONLY a BCL is required to practice in Quebec, and ONLY an LL.B is required to practice in the rest of the country. The combined programme simply allows for the possibility that the student will, upon graduation, be able to choose any jurisdiction in Canada to pursue a career. One other thing...it should be mentioned that like Quebec, the State of Louisiana is a Civil Law Jurisdiction - Loomis51 21:15, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

University of Ottawa (located in Ottawa, Ontario) offers a similar program.


There should be a slight correction to this page, the Oxford BCL is no longer a two year degree, and has not been a two year course for some time. The two year course is the BCL, MPhil. The BCL being solely a one year course which can be taken by non Oxford graduates in one year. As a student about to commence the BCL, but with a law degree from another University I may attest to this. (see www.ox.ac.uk). Cambridge also is slightly different from the normal UK system- I have also made this correction.


By removing Greg Palast from the lawyer article you are destroying the wiki's credibility and leaving the number of lawyers in the US as a figure for which we list no source. Although I agree that Palast is not the ideal source for this figure, he is better than no source at all. Susan Mason

Oh yeah, that is the only piece of information on Wikipedia that is now not attributed to an outside source. Salsa Shark 06:49 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

The fact that the wiki is largely unsubstantied is no reason to purge it of what little references there are. Susan Mason

I tend to agree with Susan on this one, oddly enough. The fact that few articles have attributed tidbits does not mean this particular one should not. A better goal would be to get information from a more credible source, and cite that. -- cprompt

Oddly enough, I continue to agree with myself despite Cprompt's assertation of his viewpoint. The Greg Palast article should be removed only after we have obtained a more official statement. Susan Mason

I put a little bit in on the current problems the legal profession is facing. Specifically how the legal profession's reputation has taken a hit in recent times. Such as the acts of ambulance chaser sand the health care crisis. I know there are many good and hardworking attorneys out there who only want to protect the legal rights of others. But there are others out there who are only in it for the money, and love getting their hands of large cash settlements, which they take a large part of. I think in the interests of NPOV, we need to devote part of the article to current issues facing us.

JesseG 04:11, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

I re-wrote this section somewhat to make it clear and also to try to minimise some generalisations. The consequences of ambulance chasers may not be as readily identified as you suggested. --195.166.17.214 09:54, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Section about Lawyers in the US

Specifically, the paragraph that deals with lawyers/capita in the us

Could an argument be made also that the presence of a Common Law system almost mandates a larger legal sector as most law is judge-made and thus subject to interpretation? Contrasted with the civil law system, where laws are more codified and thus the size of the legal profession managing these laws isn't as great, this could account for the greater proportions of lawyers in a Common law nation. Additionally, since the US is a common law system with the largest number of internal political divisions (i.e. 50 states) and a federalist system of government, it would seem that a larger legal profession would be almost a foregone conclusion.

do you think this argument is something that should be added?

what happened to the poland section now we have no representation of civil law countries in this article. Paladine

It was still there. Anon removed Wiki markup, thus section from TOC disappeared, but data was still there. Reverted. Przepla 19:11, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Lawyers??

I didn't understand a thing on this page. Perhaps because it was written by lawyers? ;) Details about law practices in US/UK/Pol should be moved to a separate article and more text should be devoted to the profession and history. Nichalp 20:02, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're getting at; the page is no more unreadable than other Wikipedia pages on other professions like "Physician."

In my opinion, the page, as is, does a decent job explaining what a lawyer is at present, what they do, and how to become one.

If the page were to be rewritten to focus on the history of the profession, that would actually make it much harder to understand, for virtually everyone but lawyers. The profession has changed radically depending upon which country and time period you are talking about. Although modern American lawyers like to see themselves as the intellectual descendants of the great Roman orators, they have very little in common except for their general responsibility to advocate on behalf of specific named clients.

And if you're talking about law as a profession in the strictly "professional" sense, I'm not sure what you're getting at. The professional responsibility of lawyers is an important topic, but not appropriate for this article. It's really a subject of legal ethics, which most non-lawyers find boring.

--Coolcaesar 03:19, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

POV section on tort reform

The section discussing tort reform etc. seems highly biased towards support for lawyers and high damage awards. David.Monniaux 11:49, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've attempted to address the issues slightly, though I am by no means an expert in the field, other than knowing a physician that has been the subject of (what he describes as) frivolous tort claims. The person in question firmly believes that tort is at least partially responsible for recent increases in premiums. --Bletch 22:03, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
In my reading, the first paragraph now seems predominantly unbiased, but the second paragraph still uses politically-based terminology ("big business," a favorite for liberals like myself--but no place here) --Bastique 16:28, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I took a bit of a heavy hand to the article and rewote a bit of the first paragraph and just excised the second. If you think it can be saved, feel free to rewrite it.
In the United States, judges, lawyers and jurors give power to each individual to appear before the court; allowing one person to stand against a government, a big business or an insurance company to fight for what rightfully belongs to that individual, whether it be against a large business who has injured a worker, an insurance company that refuses to pay out a fair premium for an accident, or a government that seeks to take away civil rights. Of particular importance to the system of law is the juror. Each member of every jury holds the power of the Constitution in his or her hands, and the knowledge that the system works because that juror has given his or her valuable time to make it work. Most jurors take this responsibility very seriously, as each juror realizes, at some point in one's life, one may be required to depend upon a jury of one's peers to adjudicate a case at bar.
--CVaneg 20:19, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Right to counsel

I wonder which were the first countries:

  • To allow the defendant in trials for severe crimes to have a lawyer. If I understand it correctly, in England, before the Prisoners' Counsel Act of 1836, felony defendants could not have a lawyer in court. This probably extended to other common law countries.
  • To mandate, in such trials, that the defendant should have a lawyer, and to appoint a lawyer if he did not have one. In France, this was mandated in the Napoleonic Code of Criminal Instruction.
  • I'm unsure about US courts at the time. It seems that the right to counsel was a much later addition when it came to trials in state courts. One finds a mention of a 1853 Indiana Supreme Court decision declaring it a right, and a 1963 US Supreme Court decision making it a right for some crimes even in trials under state law. [5].

David.Monniaux 07:12, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Criticisms section missing?

A lawyer was in the #Wikipedia channel talking, and I was wondering why lawyers are so disliked (and also why jews are so disliked as well in society, I plan to go there next to check out the roots of antisemitism but anyway...) I see there is no criticism or public opinion section in this article to my disapointment. I think the article is unbalanced unless we give the factual account of how the public seems to dislike lawyers (almost as disliked as politicians are they not?). We'll find some polls and other info hopefully to flesh out the facts and add it to the article :). --ShaunMacPherson 06:24, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree; I'd imagine that crticisms toward law are rooted in a realization of how law becomes more about a game rather than justice. I'd like to see more too, but I just removed a section that was original research. --Bletch 22:57, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I wonder if something should be added about lawyer criticism... not about the actual profession, but about the beliefs that lawyers are usually distasteful human beings. They can regularily be found on internet discussion boards, arguing rudely about mundane things. Being a lawyer may appear to be a profession that involves lying and cheating others in order to enhance an already huge bank account. Peoplesunionpro 19:29, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Unless you can support your overbroad assertion (frankly, ridiculous on its face) with a citation to a reliable, neutral, verifiable source like the Wall Street Journal or Time magazine, your baseless innuendo is original research and is inappropriate for Wikipedia. If inserted into the article without adequate support, your assertion will be treated as vandalism and reverted immediately. Also, Wikipedia is not a soapbox. See Wikipedia core content policies like Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not.
There are legitimate critiques of the legal profession and the article already summarizes such criticism with numerous citations to well-known sources like the National Post.--Coolcaesar 05:14, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Removed Original Research

I've removed the following section under the heading 'public opinion':

Lawyers are also the object of scorn in many lawyer jokes and are usually identified one of the more disliked profession, often just a head of politician. The reasons for this dislike are numerious and varied although cheif among them could be that: defense lawyers are seen as helping morally corrupt individuals get off on technalities, that in the american adveserial system the object isnt truth but 'winning' and that lawyers play fast and loose with the truth.
This low opinion is somewhat paradoxical in that many lawyers enter the profession because of a desire to help for and advocate on behalf of individual and their freedoms. It could be that in a nonloser pays system in America, the fear of the large cost of being sued (since you lose money even if you 'win') translates into a fear and dislike of lawyers.

I've had some mixed feelings about removing this; as the first paragraph has some truth to it, though the second paragraph is a bit more argumentative. --Bletch 22:52, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)


Why can't this section be properly written. I take issue with the silly and factless comments made here and the attacks on the legal profession.

Please clean up your act.

Tim

Thank you for your suggestion regarding [[: regarding [[:{{{1}}}]]]]! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to…) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome.

How can I find the definitions of New Zealand terminology. Is it the same as the british system? I understand the difference between solictor and barristor but what is the definition of attorney? C Nicol

Benefits of Admission

Fascinating revert to omit "permission to practice law" from the "Benefits of admission" section. Real contribution there. (Sixten8 06:22, 4 August 2005 (UTC))

I see your point. I will add that text back in, but I believe the existing text about the bar identification numbers should stay. Unauthorized practice of law (the problem of "fake lawyers") is a serious problem in the most populated states like California and New York. --Coolcaesar 23:10, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Neutrality?

Is there really a necessity for the neutrality disputement in the Current Issues section?

Why this passage had to go...

I just removed the following paragraph:

In recent years, there has sometimes been competition for graduates of first and second tier law schools such that various mega firms in New York City and other large U.S. cities hired graduates of Canadian top tier law schools in preference over graduates of U.S. third tier law schools.

I read Law.com regularly (as well as the ABA Journal, and the Daily Journal, the main legal newspaper in California) and I have never seen anything about such a bizarre trend over the past 3 years. Law.com is the online operation of American Lawyer Media, which publishes American Lawyer magazine and the National Law Journal.

Of course, self-authenticating assertions can stay on Wikipedia, but this is a rather daring assertion that frankly, sounds ridiculous. After all, Canadian law is quite different from American law, both in terms of substantive rules and preferred writing styles. Until someone can bring in a citation to prove it, I think it has to stay out of the article. --Coolcaesar 04:38, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

One citation would include the following off the official University of Ottawa Faculty of Law website:

http://www.commonlaw.uottawa.ca/eng/student_services/career/handbook/ch4_job_market.htm

"Going South of the Border

Canadian law students at the top of their class are increasingly sought after by major firms in New York, and to a lesser extent, Boston. Currently, US firms conduct OCIs at McGill University and the University of Toronto early in the fall semester. The rigorous legal training, lavish monetary compensation, and prestige of working on some of the world's major transactions are but a few of the highlights offered south of the border. As well, students may seek work in the US to gain international experience and contacts which they intend to bring back with them when they return to Canada. On the other hand, the demanding hours, fast pace, and intensity of the work will certainly not be for everyone. Typically, competition is fierce, with firms getting thousands of applications from law students across the US. For more information the CDRC has a copy of the National Association for Law Placement's NALP Directory of Legal Employers 2002-2003, as well as copies of the New York Law Journal available for in-office viewing."

user:Aquarius rising

Right, but that's a rather subjective observation by one law school's career services office. Do you have any citations to legal newspapers or magazines to demonstrate that point? --Coolcaesar 13:55, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

This article is a mess

Hello everyone:

At 38 kilobytes, I think we are getting to the point where the Lawyer article has to be broken up into separate articles.

Here is my suggestion for how to break it up:

Lawyer becomes a very general description of what lawyers do. I mean REALLY general. Maybe we can have one description for what common law lawyers do and another for civil law lawyers. And then all the other messy details (education, admission, career path, statistics, etc.) should be shunted off to country-specific articles. Like Lawyers in the United States, Lawyers in Poland, etc.

Some things (like freeways) are similar enough around the world to remain mostly together in one article, but I think the whole concept of what it means to be a lawyer is different enough from one country to the next that it has to be broken up. Otherwise, people will keep on wandering in and adding stuff, and we will end up with a 200KB overview of lawyering in 55 countries which no one will actually read.

What does everyone think?

--Coolcaesar 04:44, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Complete Rewrite / Request for Split

I propose a rewrite of this article. I have copied the wiki to a new sandbox on my user page, see it here User:Davidkinnen/Legal Sandbox I also propose country specific information be split off into seperate pages. I have already started to create country specific pages. Davidkinnen 13:29, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

I have rewritten this page and have hived off some sections onto their own pages. You can see them at:

I propose creating the following pages:

  • Education of Lawyers (general article)

Davidkinnen 09:51, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Generally a good idea, I think. If I were trying to reasearch "education of lawyers in the UK" on the current page I would have to look at several different sections, and still would not have found any references to the LPC or articles, which together make up a whole 3 years of the qualification process. (Sorry, I know I'm using the old terminology.) Davidkinnen, let me know when you hive off that page (or section in your Education of lawyers page) and I will be happy to add my twopennorth to it. And I promise to use the current terminology, too. AndyJones 20:16, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, the split I suggested sort of went okay, except not quite the way I contemplated. For example, the article title above actually should be Education of lawyers in the United States; WP style is to capitalize only proper nouns and the first word of the article title, not every noun. Yes, I know that's weird, but the vast majority of pages are already set up with headings and article titles that style, and the Manual of Style reflects that, so we should be consistent. --Coolcaesar 05:57, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I see. Perhaps I should start an Education of lawyers in England and Wales, pulling all the necessary information out of Lawyer then padding it with the bits which are missing. Lawyers from other jurisdictions can add their articles as they see fit. How about and Educuation of lawyers disambiguation? At present it would only have two links, but I'm sure Canada, Scotland and Singapore, and then others, will leap in once they realise articles are needed.

Lawyer Jokes

Forgive the flippant comment, but do you think there's room for something on Lawyer Humour? It's a genre of humour that represents something of public opinion of the trade. Could be a useful (and dare I say, entertaining) addition to the article. --Sweet-indigo 15:54, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I doubt it. Nearly all lawyer jokes are probably in violation of Wikipedia's neutrality and notability policies (that is, they are neither neutral nor notable). However, a mention of some of the more famous cultural references to lawyers might be appropriate, such as the famous line from Hamlet about "Let's kill all the lawyers," which was actually spoken by one of the bad guys. --Coolcaesar 21:06, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
Yes, although not in Hamlet but in Henry VI Part II. I do agree something about the negative reputation of lawyers (as evidenced in lawyer jokes) is necessary. AndyJones 20:08, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Just a suggestion: Why doesn't someone start a new entry/page titled "lawyer jokes". By any lawyer's reasoning that avoids the neutrality requirement and "notable", well, it is an entire subgenre of the art of humor (how's that for loaded phrasing?).

The problem is that lawyer humor is very cultural-specific, since legal practice varies so much from one country to the next. A brief yet comprehensive and accurate analysis of the issue could be done only by someone with knowledge of legal practice in many countries as well as lawyer jokes in those countries. There are only a few hundred people in the world who are knowledgeable enough to do that without having to do any special research. I could theoretically do it, but it would take me about 10 hours of research to get it right, and there are more fun things I'd rather research for WP.
I'm not really terribly keen on the idea. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and a page of jokes doesn't sound very encyclopedic, however you dress it up. Agree with (not sure who, possibly Coolcaesar) above that lawyer jokes on both sides of the atlantic are very different in their focus. AndyJones 17:00, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

New proposal on reorganization

Okay, everyone, several months ago I proposed splitting up this huge article. Now the result is an even bigger mess! We have massive redundancy and confusion across numerous articles, including: Admission to the bar, Attorney at Law, Education of Lawyers in the United States, Law school, Bar association, Juris Doctor, etc. Over time this mess is only going to become totally unmanageable (see the pigpen of an article on Divorce for an example of what I mean).

I believe the better solution may be to consolidate numerous articles together (probably Attorney at Law and Education of Lawyers in the United States) into a single Lawyers in the United States article. Redundancy could be taken care with a "See [article title] for more information on [subject]."

Also, the Lawyer article should probably be reorganized into large sections written in very general terms with specific clauses indicating country-specific practices. Then instead of large country-specific subsections, we should have a clause saying: "For more information on lawyers in specific countries, see:" and then links to "Lawyers in the United Kingdom," "Lawyers in the United States," etc.

What does everyone think? --Coolcaesar 09:21, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Works for me. I'm happy to merge out and reorganise the "Lawyers in the United Kingdom" parts if we get a concensus on this. The article definitely has organisation problems as it is.AndyJones 13:00, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I support this proposal. I tried earlier this year to re-organise this, with some success but seemed to have created a greater profusion of articles, rather than helping. So certainly geographically specific situations would be good. There is also the issue of pages such as Solicitor, Barrister and Advocate (counsel in Scotland) which already covers Lawyers in the United Kingdom. Davidkinnen 17:48, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm glad to see that I have some support on this issue. Unfortunately, I'm too busy again at the moment to directly tackle the problem of cleaning up this huge mess (I've been busy dealing with a smaller but equally troubling mess at Freeway and Expressway). I'll get around to it sooner or later, I think.--Coolcaesar 18:50, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay, everyone, I think I will be trying to take care of this during the first week of January 2006 (if I have the time). I am thinking about creating a general Lawyers in the United States article with a lot of existing articles (like Juris Doctor, bar association, law school, etc.) as "subarticles" linked from short summaries in the main article. If anyone has any objections, let's here them. --Coolcaesar 00:04, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, go for it. AndyJones 09:57, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I have an objection. I would like to see the training and expertise of lawyers in the USA compared to the training and expertise of lawyers in other countries. For example, I have been reading the section on barristers. Apparently, the UK has a better system than we do. Based only on what I read in Wikipedia, a trial conducted by barristers would be of much higher standard than one conducted by American lawyers. Also, again just from reading the little that is written on Wikipedia, apparently a trial in most other advanced countries would be of a higher standard than an American trial. LegalEagle1798 18:48, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

"higher standard?" What does that mean and where do you get that? As an American trial lawyer...I'm curious.Gator (talk) 18:50, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Apparently from reading the Wikipedia article on barristers, the standard for being a barrister practicing in a court room is higher than the standard for an American lawyer practicing in a court room. Again from Wikipedia,in the UK there are barristers and solicitors. These two groups together perform the analogous functions that lawyers do in America. Barristers are held to a higher standard than solicitors since they actually represent people in the court room.
This implies a higher standard in the court room, because if we took all the lawyers in America and only allowed the top 10-20% of them to practice in the court room(for example IQ tests could be given to determine the top 10-20%), we would immediately have higher standards in our court rooms.LegalEagle1798 19:59, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Followed you up until your logic leap ("This implies a higher standard in the court room") you're asuming and that's not logical. This: "Apparently, the UK has a better system than we do. Based only on what I read in Wikipedia, a trial conducted by barristers would be of much higher standard than one conducted by American lawyers. Also, again just from reading the little that is written on Wikipedia, apparently a trial in most other advanced countries would be of a higher standard than an American trial." Is entitrely unsupported POV and I take offense. Just ebcause someone has to junmp through more hoops to get into a courtroom in the UK or elsewhere does not automatically mean or imply that the trails are conducted to a higher standard. Please.Gator (talk) 20:00, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Agreeing with Gator, let me tell you about jumping through hoops. In order to practice law in the U.S., first you have to maintain high academic performance while getting a bachelor's degree and score well on a tricky test called the LSAT; then you must be admitted to law school, where you have about a one in four chance of flunking out in your first year, where you will be subjected to a nonstop academic schedule of reading cases, writing briefs that get torn apart by legal writing profs, being subjected to the socratic method by experts on the intricacies of the basics of law, and finishing each semester with a battery of three and four hour essay exams which require mastery of the field of law and the ability to do sharp analysis under pressure. And that's just the first year of a three year program which will also require you to write substantial (80+ page) seminar papers, compete in oral arguments before community lawyers, and volunteer 30 hours of your time in pro bono legal services. If you make it through those steps, you'll get a J.D., but still will not be licensed to practice law - then you need to study for the bar exam, a two or three day ordeal of twelve or more hours of testing on both universal common law and federal law topics, and on the intricacies of the laws of whichever state you are taking the exam in. About a quarter of exam-takers fail the bar, and are denied the ability to practice. There's also a separate ethics exam (the MPRE) which you take another week. So, assuming you've gotten into law school, put in the arduous three years and come out with a J.D., taken and passed the bar exam and the MPRE, now you get to go argue court cases - unless you get a good paying job with a major firm, in which case you'll be stuck in the file room doing research and writing memos and briefs for three years before you get to see the inside of a courtroom. By the way, you have to take yet another exam if you want to be admitted to practice in a federal court, and on top of all of the above, you have to do a certain number of hours of Continuing legal education credits every year to stay abreast of the law, or you'll lose the license you have. And, if you have a serious ethical breach (like spending your client's money without permission), you'll be disbarred. So, you go get a law degree and pass the bar exam, and get to a point where you can argue a case in court, and then tell me about jumping through hoops to get to that point. BD2412 T 20:20, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

The same argument can be made for any other graduate degree, but certainly since lawyers can do so much damage to the lives of people and to society they must be held to a higher standard. The only way to raise standards is to set the bar higher and cull the herd. LegalEagle1798 07:46, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

For example: I can run a legal systemt hat requires all lawyers to go to school for 12 years and pass numerous exams, but if there is no proper enforcement of ethics, continuing education and the courtroom procedure is uncivilized chaotic and there is no sense of justice in my legal system then no matter how qualified my lawyers may be my trials are gonna be crap. So you can't assume that trials conducted elsewhere are better based on simply one or a fe factors that requires a great deal of in depth analysis and some serious POV, one of which you are not doing and one of which you are.Gator (talk) 20:08, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Now I know for sure that LegalEagle is not a lawyer, and is probably not a mature adult. The last time I was as ignorant as LegalEagle about the legal system was when I was nine years old (right before I started reading through the World Book Encyclopedia).
The vast majority of American cases today are won or lost on the quality of the written pretrial motions, not oral argument to a judge or a jury! That's taught the first week in first-year Lawyering Skills! Oral argument is mostly a formality. In many states, like here in California, the court system is so overburdened that they have rules under which the court releases a tentative ruling on a motion the day before the hearing is scheduled, and then oral argument happens only if the loser specifically demands it. Also, more than 90% of civil cases are terminated in settlements. Indeed, both federal and state courts require parties to participate in mandatory settlement conferences with the judge before they can get to a trial.
Also, LegalEagle is an idiot to assume that IQ correlates to oral speaking ability or to assume that the ability to persuade a jury is all there is to being a good lawyer. There are many fine "paper" lawyers who write beautifully but are terrible when it comes to arguing on their feet to a jury, and there are many fine trial lawyers who can talk a jury into believing anything but are terrible at basic litigation tactics, motion drafting, and law firm management. I, for one, am not going to take anything else this idiot says seriously. --Coolcaesar 20:12, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Where is the evidence of raised standards???

I want to see evidence of raised standards. I think the bar is very low, and this is based on the very subjective observation that there are hordes of bad lawyers. But further on the damage lawyers are doing to society in all areas of the law.

  • See, e.g. "State bar officials in a number of other states -- most recently New York on Sept. 24 -- also have decided or are considering whether to make bar examinations more difficult to pass."[6] Where is the evidence of hordes of bad lawyers, or of the damage lawyers are doing to society? That's what politicians may be telling you to divert attention from the real problems of society, but I haven't seen it. BD2412 T 18:28, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

The strongest evidence of harm that lawyers do to society may come George W Bush's remarks on lawyers and the fact that he twice won the presidency for one. Further evidence will be provided in the appropriate sections of these articles hopefully despite your fevered efforts to sanitize these pages.

Using your source there is no evidence of raised standards. If anything those raised standards will come in the future. Please revert back to my last edits as what now stands is incorrect. Please someone tell me how this is resolved as this article does not clearly articulate the lawyer problem.

  • I happen to know for a fact that bar standards were raised in Florida, because I recently took (and passed) the Florida bar. But bar standards are just the tip of it, state bar associations are denying admission to applicants based on their past histories[7][8], a restriction that is not placed on members of other professions. Anyway, Bush has given plenty of praise to lawyers as well - when that's the audience he's in front of - and the fact that he twice won the presidency has nothing to do with whether lawyers are good or bad, unless you're assuming that the voters didn't care about taxes or abortion. Please do some actual research on the topic before you parrot someone else's invective towards lawyers. BD2412 T 00:59, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I happen to know for a fact that bar standards are low because the lawyer that lives down the street is an idiot. Of course, this type of reasoning is fallacious and it is humorous that you use it in the very same sentence where you are bragging about passing the bar and defending lawyer standards.

The fact is that the public perception of lawyers has continued to degrade, and you have provided very poor evidence of raised standards. Politicians are targeting lawyers because the public does not like lawyers. It is probable that most members of the public do not like lawyers because of unpleasant experiences that many individual members of the public have had with lawyers. It is for Wikipedia to ascertain more scientifically why the public dislikes lawyers. Instead of supplying rebuttals to the criticisms, the apologists for the lawyers are deleting or altering criticism to suit their own dogma. The practice of deleting and altering criticism is amply documented on this discussion page. This practice does not represent all views fairly and without bias. The American public’s disdain for lawyers is a major issue. LegalEagle1798 01:11, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Public perception and actual performance of lawyers are two different things. Please do not confuse or conflate the two. Also, correlation does not equal causation, something every intelligent child learns in eighth grade science (at least in California's high-quality suburban middle schools). Last time I checked, the consensus was that the public does not like lawyers because politicians and the media do not like lawyers because of the things that bad lawyers like Richard Nixon did (I am referring to Watergate). Furthermore, the tort reform lobby has made attacking the public image of lawyers a major part of their platform. Before you parrot their propaganda, read the works by major scholars on the public perception of lawyers like Richard Abel and Jerold Auerbach (which are available at nearly all well-funded public libraries).
Also, it is obvious that you are probably not a lawyer, and you have probably never dealt with the full range of legal professionals and the quality of their work product. If you had, you would realize that non-law-trained people make a lot of dumb errors. They confuse e.g. and i.e., they cite cases to the wrong reporter and year, they cite cases and statutes for rules that do not exist, they cite cases and statutes that do not exist, they do not conform their papers to basic formatting rules (margins, fonts, and so on) and basic rules of spelling and grammar, and so on and so forth. Plus they make a lot of tactical and strategic errors which one learns to avoid only through painful experience.
Finally, would you really like to live in a country where lawyers and the rule of law are not taken seriously, like China or Russia? I'm referring to the majority of countries in the world where if you are hurt in a car crash or by a defective product, and you sue the responsible party, the defendant could simply bribe the government to have you arrested and shot for the crime of revealing "state secrets." And they could ensure your lawyer meets the same fate too (as has happened on numerous occasions). Which is one reason lawyers are quite rare in those countries.
So, that is why dispute resolution professionals are a necessary evil in a civilized society. Or as the old bumper sticker used to say: America, love it or leave it. --Coolcaesar 17:54, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Criticism section

I think that this article needs a "criticism of lawyers" section, and should mention problems and concerns about excessive litigation, twisting the law, Critical Legal Studies and so on. Lawyers sometimes have a very bad name (law prof Jack Balkin apologizes to prostitutes for the indignity of being compared to lawyers), and I think that both sides should be able to address this issue in the article. Before add anything, I wanted to make sure there was consensus or at least assent to do so. Thoughts? Dave (talk) 23:46, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I used to be opposed to a criticism of lawyers section. But I was just reading Lawrence Friedman's History of American Law in the 20th Century this week (see the edit I recently made to the Nevada article). Friedman has a very nice section analyzing the poor public reputation of American lawyers and the huge variety of lawyer jokes. I guess if America's foremost living legal historian feels necessary to discuss why American lawyers are so poorly perceived, Wikipedia may as well discuss it too. But to maintain Wikipedia's neutrality, we should limit the discussion to paraphrases of the points expressed in neutral works by academics like Friedman. --Coolcaesar 03:06, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Are you saying that the Jack Balkin article I linked to is out of bounds, or just making a general statement? He's clearly qualified to write on the subject. [9] I'm not saying we have to quote him calling lawyers "whores," but the argument that legal interpretations can justify a lot of bad stuff should be included, and I think we would be doing a disservice to the reader if we didn't point out that lawyers were on both sides of a lot of important social issues, including ones we now consider to be crucial for human rights. Dave (talk) 03:26, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm saying the article is out of bounds because it's a blog posting. Blogs are inherently unreliable. Wikipedia policy is to use reliable sources when available, and there are already lots of formally published works on the negative public perception of lawyers. But you're right, the argument should be included. --Coolcaesar 20:13, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
As I noted above, Balkin is a Yale Law professor, and while his article wasn't reviewed before he published it online, he's still eminently qualified to talk about his profession. Dave (talk) 00:29, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, it's not the lack of peer review or his academic qualifications that's the issue, it's the reliability and seriousness of blog postings. The advantage of documents published on paper is that more thought and work goes into them because once it's out there you can't take it back. It's basically the online equivalent of a diary or thinking out loud. Again, I don't see Balkin as saying anything more than what's been said in a more refined form in many paper publications. --Coolcaesar 23:09, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
If you find something better, you can swap it in. Dave (talk) 00:13, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Still working on reorganization

Progress update for everyone: I got Richard Abel's comprehensive books on Lawyers in Society and Lawyers in America out of the public library to prepare for a full rewrite of this article as well as the drafting of Lawyers in the United States. Abel's books are a fun read, but it's also a lot of information to digest (for example, the incredibly messy situation with jurists in France). I hope that in a few days I will have absorbed enough to start drafting at a subpage of the talk page.

At this point, I think that there are enough general similarities between what lawyers do across the common law and civil law worlds to not have to bifurcate the article as it currently is. Rather, I will be structuring the article around "What lawyers do," "Lawyer regulation," etc., written in terms of very broad generalizations with appropriate digressions to cover the weird exceptions.

For example, one similarity I've noticed is the tendency of federal states like Switzerland, Canada, and the U.S. to regulate lawyers through integrated bar associations (or equivalents) at the state/provincial level. Another is the strong similarity between the Italian Ordine and the American integrated bar association (in terms of their connection to the state). --Coolcaesar 23:09, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I am starting work right now on a draft at Talk:Lawyer/2006 rewrite. It will take a while. --Coolcaesar 03:14, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

criticism of lawyers

An addition to the Lawyer article was deleted by coolCaeser and dishonestly described as vandalism. As the first step of the dispute resolution process I am posting the deleted text to the talk section after some discussion of the rules that have been broken.

The "too many lawyer" problem and its ramifications and variations is a major issue in this country and increasingly in the world. Whether a majority of people think that there are too many lawyers and too much litigation may be disputed. It cannot be disputed that this is a major issue. Perhaps this could have been written differently as I was focusing on verified quotes since I knew that the apologists for the lawyers would immediately try to water down and soften any criticism of lawyers in this article. This is against NPOV principles of Wikipedia which is that both sides of a contentious issue should be presented. Instead the whole addition was deleted with a dishonest comment, which is also against Wikipedia policy. But this was not surprising in this article.

It is against Wikipedia policy to delete this section and describe it as vandalism. I hope the apologists for the lawyers have enough integrity To agree that Wikipedia policy was broken here.

Lastly, it is clear that the apologists for the lawyers dominate the writing of this article. But this article should not be a mouthpiece for the lawyers. Certainly a large cross section of the United States and the world believe that the lawyers are in need of some criticism, and this view and the criticisms should be reflected in this article.

The deleted text follows: ___________________________________________________________________

Too Many Lawyers

The phrase "too many lawyers" brought 81,300 hits on Yahoo and 61,200 hits on Google on January 10, 2006. There are a myriad number of postings on both sides of the issue.

For every 320 Americans there is a lawyer - indeed, with 799,960 lawyers among a population of 255,600,000, America may have the highest proportion of lawyers per capita in the world. In England, there are 694 Englishmen per lawyer, in France 2,461 Frenchmen per lawyer and in Japan 8,195 Japanese per lawyer. Lest you think the Japanese are exceptionally poorly served, you may wish to reflect that there are 15,748 Koreans per lawyer, with a mere 2,813 lawyers for Korea's population of 44,300,000. "Law in Japan" by Bill Stonehill

The first hit on Google on this day brought the following:

"When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty. When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace. When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice." Lin Yutang (1895-1976), Chinese-American writer, translator, and editor.

In 1770, Grafton County, New Hampshire provided the following census report to King George III:

Your Royal Majesty, Grafton County... contains 6489 souls, most of whom are engaged in agriculture, but included in that number are 69 wheelwrights, 8 doctors, 29 blacksmiths, 87 preachers, 20 slaves, and 90 students at the new college. There is not one lawyer, for which fact we take no personal credit, but thank an Almighty and Merciful God.

Rhode, Too Much Law, Too Little Justice, 11 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 989.

Many of the apologists for the lawyers claim that if there are too many lawyers, then their incomes will decrease and the free market will rectify the problem. But the following rather amusing anecdotes suggests the problem is not so simple:


"Popular humor collections replay endless variations on this theme. A common and not necessarily apocryphal) example portrays a solo practitioner starved for business in a small town. A second lawyer then arrives, and they both prosper." In the Interests of Justice: Reforming the Legal Profession By Deborah L. Rhode; Oxford US

In the popular movie Other People's Money, Danny Devito's character said that "lawyers are like nuclear missiles, I have mine you have yours and when we use them we *%&* everything up."

Clearly lawyers don't follow the same supply and demand fundamentals that most other trades follow. Lawyers can create more demand for their profession simply by filing a lawsuit. The direct implication of the filing of a lawsuit is that the other side needs to hire a lawyer. If a shoemakers produces too many shoes than the supply of shoes increase effecting demand. If lawyers produce more litigation than it is not clear at all that this increased supply will effect demand, in fact the increased supply of lawsuits is likely to increase the demand for lawyers.

Dan Quayle, the former Vice President of the United States of America asked, "Does America really need 70 percent of the world's lawyers? Is it healthy for our economy to have 18 million new lawsuits coursing through the system annually?" These figures have been open to dispute, but it beyond doubt that the USA has by far more lawyers per capita than any country on earth.

"Bar passage in Japan was notoriously low, and practicing lawyers did not play the same prominent role in business and government as they do here. Commentators, including Derek Bok, then-president of Harvard University, suggested that if only our best graduates became engineers like the Japanese rather than lawyers, we would be better off." Tom Ginsburg, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Jerome K. Jerome, the turn-of-the-century British humorist (Three Men in a Boat): "If a man stopped me in the street, and demanded of me my watch," observed Jerome, "I should refuse to give it to him. If he threatened to take it by force, I feel I should, though not a fighting man, do my best to protect it. "If, on the other hand, he should assert his intention of trying to obtain it by means of an action in any court of law, I should take it out of my pocket and hand it to him, and think I had got off cheaply."


Scottish Parliament Wednesday 23 March 2005

Stewart Stevenson: "In business, it is said that it is possible to tell what phase a company is in by the following means. When a company is growing and developing, engineers-be they software engineers, textile engineers or traditional lathe-based engineers-are at its heart; when the company is mature, the accountants run it; but when the lawyers run the company, nobody should put their money anywhere near it, because it is on the home straight. One of the difficulties might be that we have too many lawyers and accountants and not enough engineers."

lawyer humor

The Lawyers Know Too Much Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

LegalEagle1798 04:45, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Possible copyvio material removed - please show permission to copy this poem before posting it it on Wikipedia. Thanks. BD2412 T 18:36, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

The Copyright Law of the United States Of America (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the reproduction is not to be "used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research."

It is certainly ironic that a lawyer removed this particular poem from Wikipedia using a legal contrivance. Let us all hope that this poem can remain.

  • Copyright law is not merely a legal artifice, it is a legal fact (and one, I might add, which your Congress and your Supreme Court have recently magnified, see Eldred v. Ashcroft). Wikipedia is neither a library nor an archive, and posting the poem here is not furnishing "a" photocopy or reproduction, but effectively publishing limitless copies of the poem. By removing your likely copyright violation, I have protected you, not myself, from the reach of the law. BD2412 T 03:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Why LegalEagle1798's content is inappropriate

LegalEagle1798's proposed content violates all of the following Wikipedia official policies:

I have repeatedly urged LegalEagle1798 to get out of the house and go to a public library and read some of the excellent scholarly critiques of the legal profession, such as Richard Abel's American Lawyers, Jerold Auerbach's Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America, Mary Ann Glendon's A Nation Under Lawyers: How The Crisis In The Legal Profession Is Transforming American Society, and Anthony Kronman's The Lost Lawyer: Failing Ideas of the Legal Profession. These are verifiable, neutral sources by prominent lawyers and law professors. They are all incisive, insightful and well-researched critiques of the American legal profession's well-known structural problems, unlike LegalEagle's rambling, disorganized collection of silly anecdotes. Furthermore, as Richard Abel points out in his book on Lawyers In Society: The Civil Law World, it is actually impossible to directly compare the number of American lawyers to the number of lawyers in other countries. Relatively few countries share the American concept of the lawyer as a general-purpose advocate, counselor, conveyancer, and writer. Rather, they have a large community of jurists who share the tasks of the American lawyer, in various proportions depending upon each country.

My suspicion is that LegalEagle1798 is either too young, old, disabled, poor, or uneducated to use a public library, thus explaining his or her reliance on the low-quality sources generally available on the public Web. Most high-quality sources are available only in hard copy in libraries or in expensive private databases like LexisNexis. If so, please do not contribute to Wikipedia unless and until you are capable of providing minimally decent-quality content that complies with Wikipedia policies and guidelines. See Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines.

For an example of a well-researched article, see Roger J. Traynor. I was able to obtain almost all of the sources for this article from private research databases accessible from home through my account at the Santa Clara County Library (usually rated number 1 among library systems in its size category). Only two sources (the History of the California Supreme Court book and the History of American Law book) required a visit to a library in person.

Also see Wikipedia:How to write a great article, which I have made major contributions to. --Coolcaesar 18:30, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Typical of a lawyer to suggest only critiques written by lawyers and law professors. To call them "neutral sources," if all written by lawyers, is pretty biased itself. These writers do not have legal biases? You need criticism from outside of the system if you want to maintain a degree of neutrality.
While some of the criticisms by LegalEagle are admittedly emotional in tone, they do convey what most people are concerned about in terms of the legal system. But it's not the legal system that is entirely to blame. If there are many malicious lawsuits designed to appease plaintiff's egos and make them feel victorious, that is because there are many malicious people who are willing to engage in them. If people were willing to hear each other, step in each other's shoes, love their enemies, etc., there would of course be fewer lawsuits, and fewer lawyers - but this is primarily the fault of the people/our hostile culture, not lawyers. Of course many lawyers take advantage of it; but there are others who redirect people to dispute resoultion even if it means they don't get the case.
People have to change, but so do lawyers. They have to be trained differently: to value ethics over victory, integrety over money. That's difficult when the law profession's biggest appeal is salary. And lawyers are people like anyone else - they wish to make money, and tailor their belief systems to what is most profitable, like any business. So don't pick on lawyers, when the whole of human society is to blame.
The U.S. does have a problem with being trigger-happy to litigation, which is I think related to it's trigger-happy to use guns problem, and its trigger-happy to fight foreign wars problem (not to mention the need to get rich problem). There seems to be a lot of hostility or need for power in the U.S. - true of people anywhere, but the U.S. seems worse than other nations. Other nations have less litigation, fewer murders, fight fewer wars, and are less profit-oriented. I don't know why this is the case, but my guess is that a country that is used to getting its way by flexing its muscles teaches its citizens to do the same, and this is manifested on the streets, in the boardrooms, and in the courthouses.
If there is one area lawyers are to blame, it's the unwillingness to see that they have a problem. I'm sure there are many who do see this, but too many others love their system too much to see it - most notable in judges' comments, which echo how naive they are about the supposed virtues of the system that, in many cases, they love because it gives them so much wealth and power. The most naive comment I hear is that the system is somehow democratic, that it reflects the will of the people; when really it reflects the will of the legal establishment, and the people are powerless to change it. So lawyers need to see they have a problem. But so does everyone else. 24.64.223.203 06:45, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Uh, actually, most people who become judges are taking a huge pay cut. Usually, an experienced litigator with the qualifications to become a federal judge — top 20 law school, clerkship with a federal appeals judge, Order of the Coif, law review, moot court, 10 years of experience at AmLaw 200 firm, lots of friends in the dominant political party — could be making twice as much in private practice than what they will earn as a judge. But I have to concede that the power to order around their former colleagues is probably a big draw for at least some people. I remember talking with classmates in law school and getting the impression that I will be arguing in front of them someday.
Also, as for the alleged unwillingness to see a problem, there are actually a lot of books about what is wrong with the American legal profession that have been written by lawyers (just go search Amazon.com for the books I mentioned and notice all the cross-references offered). Also, Professor Abel has pointed out that bar associations have become much more vigorous in regulating lawyers since the 1980s because there has been so much criticism of lawyers in recent decades (especially after Watergate). But you're probably right that there are still many lawyers on both sides of the political spectrum that are still in denial about the profession's problems.
Finally, you've made some cogent points, but that still doesn't respond to the underlying issue of how LegalEagle's proposed content fails to comply with core Wikipedia policies. --Coolcaesar 09:38, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I tried (rather unsuccessfully) to remove a rather incoherent rant about lawyers that is entirely one-sided, entitled "too many lawyers". It begins by citing the number of google hits for that sub-heading -- which strikes me as being rather odd, surely irrelevant for a general (non web) article such as this? At best it should go under the public perception of lawyers, since google won't tell you much else. The rest is rather peculiar: we have numbers of lawyers per person in a selection of jurisdictions (without sources -- one wonders if England is supposed to be England and Wales or not). Then a series of negative quotes about lawyers is added -- without any attempt to put an alternative POV. Surely this is straight POV stuff and shouldn't be here? Francis Davey 21:49, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Your first post deleting my contribution indicated "some parts of it might be informative". The rules of Wikipedia state "Be respectful to others and their points of view. This means primarily: Do not simply revert changes in a dispute. When someone makes an edit you consider biased or inaccurate, improve the edit, rather than reverting it."
Do you have sources for the figures for numbers of lawyers per head? I tried to do a calculation for England and Wales, and couldn't get anything like your fitures. It would help if you said what a "lawyer" was in context, since its not clear whether you mean a member of one of the 4 legal professions in England and Wales, or someone with a law degree who does legal work (which is a much larger number). Its hard to see how some of your criticisms could apply (for example) to legislative drafters -- a job which many lawyers are employed to do, though most are not members of a legal profession. Francis Davey 08:38, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Certainly, it is beyond dispute that two of the major criticisms directed at lawyers are that there are too many of them and the costs of litigation to society. Trying to block any mention of these problems in this article by simply finding some criticism with my contribution and then just deleting the whole thing is dishonest. In the spirit of Wikipedia, something should go into the article on these points and if there are problems with the contribution, they should be corrected. It is the policy of Wikipedia to discourage the outright deletions of good faith edits.LegalEagle1798 02:19, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
The point is you quote exact figures. I assume you got them from somewhere. The question I asked above was where. Note: I didn't revert the article when you replaced what you wrote, I asked the question above. I tried to work out a number for my own jurisdiction and couldn't get near to yours. For the sake of accuracy, where did you get your numbers from? Francis Davey 07:49, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
Earlier in this section, there is a well written response by user 24.64.223.203. I disagree with the post to some extent. I believe the problem with lawyers is systemic to the legal system, and this writer is throwing much of the blame on the people that are not lawyers. I see a legal system designed to prey and profit on the people's worst impulses. Nevertheless, these issues cannot be ignored if this article is to remain in the realm of reality.
Coolceaser, who to say the least has seriously broken the rule regarding being respectful to others has threatened to block me. Does he have this authority? If he does, he shouldn't. I think Coolceaser should be blocked for his lack of respect to other editors.LegalEagle1798 00:37, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


I concur with you that the section should be removed. It is not cited to any reputable source, it is totally incoherent, and it does not comply with Wikipedia policy for the same reasons I stated above in January. User LegalEagle is a vandal and should be blocked indefinitely for failing to comply with Wikipedia policy and failing to act in good faith. I will attempt to remove that garbage. If that clown wishes to get into an edit war, so be it. --Coolcaesar 03:52, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
I have expressed my view of LegalEagle1798's latest vandalism and bad faith behavior at User talk:LegalEagle1798. --Coolcaesar 04:07, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
As usual, LegalEagle1798 has directed his/her response to other users' behavior rather than providing a coherent explanation of how his/her suggested content is in line with Wikipedia policy.
Stick to the issues, please. As my first year Lawyering Skills instructor always liked to say, "Counsel, do you have authority for that assertion?" If you don't have citations to back up your assertions, just say so. If you can't think of an intelligent way to connect your disconnected, rambling edits into a coherent passage, say so. Then we can agree to keep LegalEagle1798's edits out of the article, since as noted, the article as written by me already contains a cogent summary of the critiques of the legal profession and citations to numerous sources (just look at the footnotes). --Coolcaesar 18:53, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Public perception of lawyers

Dear fellow editors: I have moved some material regarding public perception of lawyers down a bit in the article, and recategorized it under its own heading. Also, in my opinion, some of this stuff really needs some sourcing or backup. Without citations it looks a bit "POV-ish." As a lawyer myself I have to say that unfortunately the polls that are taken of the public probably do back up the statements in the article about the negative public perception of lawyers as a group. However, to improve the article we probably should actually add citations to some of those polls. Perhaps some of my fellow editors can locate some source material before I do. Also, see the discussions above regarding critics of lawyers, etc. Yours, Famspear 15:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I am still working on my massive rewrite (see discussion above), which at this pace will probably be done in August! Unfortunately, I'm really busy with other priorities right now. Yes, I am looking for sources on the issue of the negative public perception of lawyers. And yes, I am also looking for other sources that were not edited by Richard Abel. Plus there is the problem of how I just discovered that there is a new way of doing references inline which is much easier to maintain (but now I have to rewrite all my references to that format). --Coolcaesar 06:28, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

New version is done

I had some free time in the public library today and decided to just get the revision over with. I look forward to what everyone thinks! --Coolcaesar 23:07, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, the main article should differentiate between common law and civil law countries early on in the text. Most of the "some countries do (whatever), others do (something else)" comments found in the 'tasks' of lawyers can be scrapped then, because (as described in the end of the current article) there is a very fundamental split in the history of both types of legal systems. --Thuenor 21:57, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree. If you read the old version [10], you will notice that the vast majority of the article deals with too many technical details about lawyer education and regulation in individual countries and not enough about what lawyers actually do in general. Furthermore, too many tasks are mentioned for a few countries but their actual nature is not explained. For example, most non-lawyers do not know what conveyancing is, even though it has historically sustained the practices of a large number of British solicitors.
The point of the new version was to explain in plain English what the hell lawyers do with their (very) expensive time, and emphasizing things common to the legal professions worldwide, while noting the variety of interesting local variations, and deemphasizing the common law/civil law split.
Few non-lawyers (the majority of Wikipedia's readers) know or care about the split or its implications for the legal professions, even though most lawyers are well aware of it. Wikipedia is supposed to be accessible to a general audience, not just technical specialists. Furthermore, putting back in a common law/civil law split into the article would not solve the problem. Over time, as various editors work on it, the article would eventually go back to being twice as complicated, with separate sections for fully describing all the things common law lawyers do, and all the things civil law jurists do. That might be more elegant from some lawyers' point of view, but such redundancy would thoroughly confuse laypersons, most of whom simply don't understand the difference between common and civil law (try explaining it to them sometime). --Coolcaesar 23:49, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Of course, another way to solve this problem is to simply limit the definition of lawyer in this article to its actual meaning in English of a general-purpose legal provider, which would mean that all the stuff about civil law lawyers would have to be transferred to Jurist. That is, the article could begin with an explanation that there is no such thing as a lawyer per se in civil law countries, which is true, and then refer people interested in those countries to the Jurist article. But that would be really offensive to civil law advocates, some of whom do consider themselves to be lawyers even if the term does not exist in their languages. Plus it would be a lot of work to reorganize both articles. --Coolcaesar 00:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Coolcaesar's proposed solution "to simply limit the definition of lawyer in this article to its actual meaning in English of a general-purpose legal provider, which would mean that all the stuff about civil law lawyers would have to be transferred to Jurist" would be too restrictive in my view. It would unfortunately result in the article only being about common law lawyers in fused profession jurisdictions (such as U.S. and the Canadian common law provinces). The scope of that definition would exclude lawyers in common law jurisdictions where there are separate barrister and solicitor professions for lawyers (such as in England and much of the Commonwealth). --Aquarius Rising 00:21, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, actually I should have been clearer about how the term "lawyer" does encompass jurisdictions with a dual split like England (that is, the word encompasses both "solicitor" and "barrister") but not civil law jurisdictions like France or Germany or Japan where is a whole zoo of many different types of jurists (ranging from advocates to notaries to scriveners to clerks to judges). But again, the point is that (1) it would be a lot of work and (2) it would be really offensive to a lot of civil law people (particularly advocates, who like to call themselves lawyers in English when they're technically advocates).
Then we would have huge edit wars with them, and we would have to keep teaching them that the word "lawyer" is not the right word in English for themselves. We already have huge edit wars in articles like Global city on a daily basis. Keep in mind that as written, the current version of the article has been very stable in contrast to the old version.
Also, after doing more reading on some online databases, I just realized that the situation in England and Wales is not as simple as just the solicitor/barrister split, because you have Legal Executives who evolved out of the separate field of solicitor clerks but can now practice law like solicitors. So it's a three-ring circus.
In contrast, American paralegals must always practice under the supervision of a licensed attorney or else they can be prosecuted for unauthorized practice of law (and they have been on many occasions). Plus, they are generally not considered to be part of the legal profession per se; rather, they are part of a "paraprofession" which is kind of "parasitic" or dependent upon the real legal profession.
So it seems to me that almost every jurisdiction (common and civil) has its own unique way of dividing tasks among different branches of the legal profession and there is no easy way to generalize. That's already the point of the article as it stands, because I wrote it with that conclusion in mind (since it was the conclusion of the massive comparative sociological study by Richard Abel which is the source for much of the current version). Therefore, I see no need for changing it. --Coolcaesar 16:18, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I ran across Lawrence Friedman's 2003 book on Legal Culture in the Age of Globalization in the public law library today and took notes. It's much more recent than Abel's works. For example, the French legal profession was completely unified in 1990-1991. I will add some cites to Friedman when I have the time. Then I can nominate this thing as a featured article! --Coolcaesar 18:22, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Images could be an issue

I understand why someone recently added an image request tag, but that might raise a lot of difficulties. Do we show photos of famous lawyers? Non-famous lawyers? Quite a hairball of an issue if you ask me. --Coolcaesar 20:27, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Found some history sources

More changes coming to the article---after thinking a lot about the criticism in the featured article nomination process, I found some history sources at the local public library last night. They're rather specific, but I think I can weave together a crude outline of the history of lawyers over the weekend. Also, I discovered that the UK was as screwed up as the civil law countries until the late 19th century, and there were at four to six different types of lawyers at certain points in UK history. The only reason the U.S. didn't follow the UK was because the colonial market wasn't big enough to support five or six different types of legal professionals, so John Adams complained in his writings about having to work in all those roles (which were ultimately absorbed into the role of the modern American attorney). Only at the end of the 19th century there was a collapse down to the solicitor/barrister distinction. So I'll have to revise the intro dramatically to reflect that.--Coolcaesar 18:25, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

If you'd like to discuss with me by email (fjmd1@yahoo.co.uk) I'd be more than happy to. I know a great deal about English legal history and have some references for the history of the legal profession here. Incidentally: (1) it might be a little POV to say it is "screwed up", there are *good* things about having split professions, at least I think so 8-); (2) in a sense we have a number of legal professions here (barrister, legal executive, licensed conveyancer, notary, scrivener, solicitor) some old, some new. Francis Davey 19:04, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for the offer, but I would prefer to keep the discussion on the development of the history section on this talk page rather than moving it to a private email conversation. This is so that anyone else who knows about legal history can monitor the discussion and jump in if they have any good information to add. --Coolcaesar 23:07, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
OK Francis Davey 13:17, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Got the history section started

Of course, I'm still looking for books on Roman lawyers (analyzing them together as a profession, not the lives of individuals like Cicero). I already have sources on the history of English, American, and Castilian lawyers which I will add later when I have the time (today I'm too busy). Once I have the Roman stuff then everything else will be a piece of cake. --Coolcaesar 21:05, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Now that I have some info on Roman lawyers in the article, the next step is to find information on lawyers in the Dark Ages and early medieval period. I think filling that gap will be the hardest, since it's an obscure subject. I'm also still thinking of ways to restructure the whole intro part to explain how most countries including England have traditionally had a very confusing division of the legal profession and the fused or united profession is relatively recent. The biggest problem is all the citations already embedded in that section; any rewrite of the section will require adjustments to all downstream citations so they will still make sense. --Coolcaesar 23:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Two points. First, its important that the history section doesn't, by being in temporal order (which makes sense) give the impression that there is any historical continuity from old to new legal professions. Certainly, there is no evidence in England that the legal profession grew out of anything older (well most of it). Second, please be careful about being too POV, a "very confusing division of the legal profession" may be true for you, but its a POV statement. I am sure you wouldn't let it leak into the article 8-). Seriously the attorney v pleader distinction is logical and has its advantages. I accept that where several systems of law operate, having different professionals in each forum seems confusing. Francis Davey 13:47, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

define lawyer

Hiya Cool. If "lawyers I mean people who actually advocate in court on behalf of others" then you need to retitle the article to "advocate" or something. Lawyering is definitely broader than court advocates. Judges are lawyers. rewinn 05:18, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

In British English and Commonwealth English, yes, but not in American English. In American English, a judge loses his status as a lawyer when he dons the robe and assumes the bench. A lawyer is partial, zealous, and creative on behalf of his client; a judge is impartial and careful to avoid showing bias towards either side. A judge can return to his status as a lawyer by resigning his position, but while he is on the bench he cannot act as a lawyer.
The term you are looking for that refers to all law-trained persons (advocate, counselor, judge, legislator, law clerk, professor, etc.) is jurist. Also, the advantage of using the narrow American definition is that it avoids the Whiggish imposition (see Whig history) modern concepts upon older generations that did not conceptualize the profession in those terms.
Except that, the concept of "practising law" as an activity - and therefore having a name to refer to a group of people who do so, is a US invention and was not present in older England (where the bulk of your profession originates). There was no tight notion of being "a lawyer" anyone could, and indeed mostly can, give legal advice without any kind of state interference or regulation. The term "lawyer" in the form of this page is a US concept which has no real meaning in my jurisdiction. The term jurist is not used here at all - again I have no idea what it would mean, I am not sure its the right word. The reason US lawyers get confused about this is because they imagine that everywhere else is like the US: having a concept that matches a US lawyer, that's just not true. We don't. Many other places don't. I think you have your Whiggishness the wrong way around 8-). Francis Davey 19:51, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Concerning American lawyers: Judges are lawyers. They cannot advocate for parties while on the bench. Part-time judges can perform lawyering under appropriate conditions. rewinn 20:23, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Iceland sure, but not so sure about India

Regarding Rewinn's latest edits: I had forgotten about the readings on Iceland assigned in Alternative Dispute Resolution back in law school, but your edit reminds me of them. I don't know if that's a good example of "lawyering," though, because although there was advocacy on behalf of others, the Iceland self-help system did not really operate in a forum or a court per se.

As for India, I will have to look into that when I have the time.

I found some books at the public library on lawyering in the Dark and Middle Ages (that is, what little lawyering went on) but I haven't had the time to draft text and add the citations. --Coolcaesar 05:08, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

As for that Indian guy just mentioned by Rewinn: I just skimmed the article. He wouldn't really count as a lawyer under the modern definition, but more likely would be counted as a jurist. Nearly all civilizations had judges and legal scholars, but lawyers are actually quite rare in world history until relatively recently. By lawyers I mean people who actually advocate in court on behalf of others. In most civilizations, people were expected to present their own cases — or they were interrogated by the judge in a kind of don't-speak-unless-spoken-to situation — and laws were very rudimentary. --Coolcaesar 05:11, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I put in a little about Icelandic lawyering in the Dark Ages. If you read the sagas (available cheap from Penguin, or interlibrary loan) you'll see some interesting stuff, in Hrafnkels saga (which could be read as a long lawyer joke but probably isn't), Njál's saga (an excellent courtroom battle between heavily armed Vikings), and Laxdaela saga (which includes a delightful inheritence problem: dad, mom and kid drown slowly; the order in which they die determines which side of the family gets the estate...). The sagas seem to be dramatizations rather than history, but it's interesting that dramatists were even thinking of the concept of venue. rewinn 05:14, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I am still skeptical about the Iceland situation because I do not recall that the warriors in any of the sagas actually fought before a forum (that is, in the presence of a neutral referee who could declare a winner). It seems to me that they primarily described battles governed by a set of ancient customs. Although there is an advocacy aspect in the sense that warriors often intervened on behalf of others, the sagas would then describe dispute resolution by violence or self-help which has happened in cultures around the world and is traditionally not regarded as lawyering (which involves dispute resolution by nonviolent means). I do not want to muddle the definition of the lawyer with that of the mercenary, because (1) that opens the door for mentioning a lot of dispute resolvers not traditionally regarded as lawyers (and whose connection to any of the modern roles of a lawyer is very weak) and (2) in turn we risk the publication of original research in violation of core Wikipedia policies. See Wikipedia:No original research. Can you describe a particular saga that I can then focus on looking up? --Coolcaesar 19:32, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Concerning Icelandic lawyering in the sagas: Perhaps I have not been clear that the legal contests in the sagas were precisely that: legal, not violent. There was violence before and after, but the legal contest itself was waged with words, using rules and a neutral arbitrator determining who had best applied their facts to the laws. If the loser was a poor sport ... well, that happens.... You will enjoy reading the relevant part of the sagas. The situation that of traditional lawyering, with a pre-defined set of rules (e.g. who is entitled to inherit what) sufficiently complicated that the assistance of a professional is helpful to the ordinary person, before a neutral adjudicator unrelated to the parties (or to their advocates) who renders a judgement according to the law. The "self-help" aspect refers not to the determination of judgement, but to the collection of judgement; this is still an issue today even in American law. For example, when you get a civil judgement with the help of a lawyer and resort to a repo man to collect on that judgement, the fact that the repo man is a mercenary does not make the initial legal judgement any less of a legal judgement, nor the lawyering any less lawyering.
My favorite is Niall's saga because of the complicated legal maneuvering at the end, but it is rather long. Let me summarize the legal battle (just from memory, could be faulty)
  • Defendant (D) to lawyer: Plaintiff is suing me for wrongful death (burning alive) of Niall
  • Defendant's Lawyer (DL): he's suing you in the court of the north quarter of Iceland. Secretly swear fealty (sort-of) to a lord of the west quarter. That will make his pleading improper, making him throw out the suit and we get damages!
  • Plaintiff's lawyer (PL) figures out a way around that, I forget what (I think he lodged an appeal or a new action in the Fifth Quarter court, which had jurisdiction over all Iceland.
  • DL: we have to agree on a jury. No problem. PL's candidates are improper (for some reason ... I think it was that one of them was related to Niall).
  • PL: your jury challenge fails. True, the venireman was related to Niall but it was by baptism, not by blood. And anyway, P is Niall's heirs; Niall isn't in the case (he's dead).
  • It goes on like this for chapters .... rewinn 20:23, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I am traveling right now (see my newest contribution at United States Patent and Trademark Office to get an idea of which city I am visiting). I will look up that saga at the public library when I have the time after I get back. --Coolcaesar 01:29, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I hope no-one minds, but I separated the thread about defining a lawyer from the thread about Iceland. It was just getting hard to keep straight what was what. I also deleted a few of my snarkier comments (but they're still available in history). rewinn 02:52, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
An update on my quest to improve this article: The public library in the West Valley I briefly visited today didn't have much on Icelandic literature besides a single book from the 1960s which was a very high-level analysis of the entire genre. But I'll concede that the author did use the terms "legal procedure" and "lawyering" in summarizing Njal's saga, which he called the greatest of all Icelandic sagas. However, he wasn't a lawyer, so I can't take his word for that. The next time I visit the big library in San Jose (in another week, I'm rather busy), I'll look up a translation of the saga and read it for myself. Plus I'm sure there will be more scholarly commentaries on the shelf there.
Also, I'm still thinking about how to rewrite the intro for a more balanced treatment of how the structure of the legal professions has always been rather messy in all countries including England and Wales. I haven't forgotten about that issue. --Coolcaesar 05:17, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Why do you say "he wasn't a lawyer, so I can't take his word for that"? Surely a scholar can be a non-lawyer and yet understand what lawyering is. After all, according to your definition above (which I hope you no longer endorse) most judges and law professors are not lawyers. If you accept the word only of lawyers, then take my word for it: I am a lawyer (WSBA #25833) and I have read the text and the events at law rock are lawyering under any definition that makes sense. I don't know what they are teaching in law schools these days. rewinn 22:03, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
I think the best analogy is to the expert witness situation. I don't trust sources when the author is analyzing something outside of his sphere of expertise. That's something I picked up in critical thinking class when I was in college.
Of course, I'm not saying that nonlawyers can't form an educated opinion on what is or isn't lawyering. I would definitely accept the opinion of a paralegal or law professor, as well as any scholar who specializes in studying the legal profession or the legal system. But I wouldn't trust a professor of Icelandic literature to tell me what is or isn't a lawyer, just as I wouldn't trust a lawyer with no medical training to diagnose a brain tumor. --Coolcaesar 23:58, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
I have been incredibly busy recently with legal work, but I did find an old translation of Njal's saga from the 1920s at a small public library recently. He sounds more like a jurisconsult than an advocate to me, but maybe that's because I was skimming it at high speed. Primitive jurisconsults can be found all over history (though only at the risk of writing improper Whiggish-style history) but advocates are much harder to find. When I get the chance I will try to dig up one of the contemporary translations of the saga. --Coolcaesar 02:10, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad business is good. Perhaps you'll want to make a contribution to the wikipedia foundation ;-)
  1. Your distinction between advocate and juriconsult is not relevant to Lawyer.
  2. The lawyers in Njal's saga spoke in court (not just in their client's offices); related the relevant law to the relevant facts; spoke to the decisionmakers (not to their clients) ... and in every way acted precisely as lawyers do today (except the part about killing opposing counsel). rewinn 20:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually, the distinction is relevant. From what I've ascertained so far (I have been reading some books on the history of legal systems in Asia which I plan to add cites for soon), nearly all civilizations did not have advocates because they adhered to the rule that people had to represent themselves when appearing before judges. This was the situation in both ancient Greece, at least initially, as well as ancient Israel and imperial China. These cultures (and many others) did have people who helped draft pleadings but such ghostwriters were officially despised (and in China, often arrested as "pettifoggers" and "litigation instigators"). Their work was always drafted as if it was the client speaking and the client signed the documents; they never signed in their own name.
The reason I'm focusing on a narrower definition of lawyer is because most civilizations did have judges who had a little bit of learning in law, or whatever crude system of custom or philosophy or religion which passed for a legal system. But very few civilizations until the 20th century had advocates who represented the interests of particular clients and thought about problems from a client-centered perspective. In contrast, most judges are concerned with "big picture" issues like clearing their caseload, maintaining social order, and keeping order in the court.
And your broad definition of lawyer still doesn't sound right. I've never heard any American attorney (particularly those from top tier schools) use such a broad definition that conflates lawyers and judges, either orally or in writing (and I read a lot of legal newspapers and magazines). Yes, most judges were trained as lawyers, but they lose their lawyer status (especially in the sense of being a zealous advocate) when they join the bench and become impartial dispute resolvers. Most writers refer to "lawyers and judges" to be clear that they are talking about both categories (I just ran some searches on the State Bar of California Web site). If the category of lawyers included judges, then a reference to lawyers alone would do. I also noticed that California judges technically lose their bar membership while they are serving in the judiciary. Search on any judge in the Calbar database, like Alex Kozinski, and you will see from the member status data what I mean. But they get their membership back when they resign from the judiciary.
But this is not true in other common law jurisdictions -- its a US thing. As I have said, it may be that the notion of "lawyer" as a strict category is a US-only idea, and thus highly POV. In England and Wales many solicitors and barristers (who I guess you would call lawyers) sit as part-time judges. A recorder (a more senior part-time judge) may well sit on rather important cases (for example in the High Court and I think it is possible in the court of Appeal -- there's a lot of flexibility). They are both judges in every sense of the word, but also practising "laywers" who work for clients at other times (the mix being something of a matter for them). Judges continue to be members of the Inns of Court after they cease to practice and work as judges full time. I'm not sure if they can be said to lose bar membership, although (obviously) they will stop paying for a practising certificate because they don't need one. I think the use of part-time judges in this was is usual throughout the common law world. Francis Davey 08:36, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
We use part-time judges too (a judge pro tempore or judge pro tem for short) but they retain their lawyer status and are widely viewed as state-sponsored arbitrators who fill holes in the badly underfunded judiciary (lawyers who serve as arbitrators aren't viewed as real judges either). For example, many traffic courts in California (I can testify to this from personal experience) are routinely staffed by judge pro tems (meaning burned-out middle-aged litigators) who start off by notifying everyone that they can stipulate to their jurisdiction by staying there and keeping their mouth shut, or speaking up and demanding a real judge. But if they want a real judge, then they have to come back to court on a date when a real judge is available. Since it is a big sacrifice for most middle-class and working-class people to take time off work to come down to court to resolve a $500 ticket, most people stay there and allow the judge pro tem to resolve their case (if they can talk their way out of the ticket, they will avoid a conviction and an increase in car insurance premiums that will cost a lot more than $500). There is even a box on the standard case disposition form for "Stipulates to Judge Pro Tem." Anyway, I suspect the strong division in American English between lawyers and judges comes from our Constitution's concept of an Article III judge. --Coolcaesar 02:47, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Clearly we part company on this point. In England and Wales a part time judge might be a very eminent practising lawyer as well as being a judge of some significant. So, my old head of chambers practised as Mr Record Langstaff (the title of a particular level of part-time judge) while working as head of chambers and appearing in many leading cases. He is now "Mr Justice Langstaff" (a high court judge) and no mean judge. That often happens. It is common to see High Court (and sometimes court of appeal) decisions where the judge, or one of them, is a part-timer and will therefore practice as a lawyer elsewhere. As I said, I think the US is unusual in having a tidy concept of a "lawyer" and that has to be borne in mind when constructing this article. Its more fuzzy elsewhere it really is. Francis Davey 19:12, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
I just checked my personal copy of Black's Law Dictionary, 7th edition (and I'm sure you must have a copy of either Black's or one of its smaller brethren like Barron's). At page 895, Black's defines lawyer as "one who is licensed to practice law." In turn, the "practice of law" is defined at page 1191 as: "The professional work of a duly licensed lawyer, encompassing a broad range of services such as conducting cases in court, preparing papers necessary to bring about various transactions from conveying land to effecting corporate mergers, preparing legal opinions on various points of law, drafting wills and other estate-planning documents and advising clients on countless legal questions. The term also includes activities that comparatively few lawyers engage in but that require legal expertise, such as drafting legislation and court rules." Of course, as you should know, Black's is edited by Bryan Garner, the leading authority in the United States on legal writing (who does seminars and writes lots of books and articles and so on). If he thought the practice of law or being a lawyer included judging, he could easily have said so. Can you cite any authority for your broad definition?
Right, but Black's is US POV isn't it? There is no notion of being "licensed to practice law" in England and Wales. There are a few specific tasks which require certain kinds of professional membership (will writing and conveyancing) and rights of advocacy in some courts are restricted to those authorised to do so (who are a subset of all those you might call "lawyers" and some aren't really "lawyers" in that they are specialists such as patent agents). In general, anyone can conduct litigation (except barristers who are required not to by their professional rules, but not by the general law), give legal advice on any subject, draft legal documents and so on. In sociological terms the general public will tend to think of people as "lawyers" but in a looser than you have in mind and not necessarily consistently. Really, I suspect that most people would treat lawyer=person with law degree or equivalent. Francis Davey 08:36, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
You mean most people in English-speaking countries outside the United States. Most Americans tend to have the view that lawyers argue cases (as zealous advocates) and judges decide them (as impartial neutrals). I was arguing against Rewinn's view that Americans share the Commonwealth definition of the word "lawyer," when Black's (the dominant dictionary in the U.S.) clearly indicates that they do not. --Coolcaesar 02:47, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
I thought it was obvious I was confining myself to English-speaking countries. Other languages do not use the word "lawyer" and often do not have an exact equivalent. Francis Davey 19:12, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't recall contrasting American & Commonwealth's views of lawyering. In American jurisdictions, Black's is not authoritative on the question of who is a lawyer or who is lawyering; to the contrary, every jurisdiction has strong rules, generally enforced by courts and/or delegated to associations, defining who is a lawyer and what is the practice of law. If you violate them, Black's will not help. I don't know how they do it elsewhere. rewinn 05:14, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, I am trying to focus on the broader issue of the actual linguistic usage of lawyer in American English, which as the quotation from Black's demonstrates, is clearly synonymous with attorney. And an attorney in all American jurisdictions cannot be a sworn Article III judge at the same time. Before they put on the black robe and take the oath, they have to shut down their practice and withdraw from all active cases (or transfer them to other personnel in their firm). --Coolcaesar 06:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
OK. Might it not be better to have a US-specific page which can talk about people who are licensed to practice law? Francis Davey 19:12, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Finally, can you cite to me any particular page in a certain translation of Njal's saga where someone speaks to the court on behalf of someone else? I skimmed a more recent 1997 translation at another library last weekend but didn't see anyone acting in a representative capacity, just a consultative one. --Coolcaesar 03:15, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Njalssaga Text

In modern contingency fee practice, lawyers take a case which formally remains the plaintiff's and the lawyer's fee comes out of the award. Defense lawyers are allowed to accept pay for practice. In the Iceland of Njalssaga, the plaintiff's lawyer appears to take possession of the case from the plaintiffs; the rights they argue are those of the plaintiff but the right to argue is the lawyer's. The defendant's lawyer has no connection in interest to the case; officially he is just helping the defendant; unofficially and secretly he has been paid. The money side of practice today is very different but the lawyering is still fundamentally lawyering, arguing the legal merits of another person's claim in a dispute. Let us look to the text:

For the Plaintiff:

CHAPTER 134. OF THORHALL AND KARI
http://omacl.org/Njal/9part.html
"Then Mord took Thorgeir by the hand and named two witnesses to bear witness, "That Thorgeir Thorir's son hands me over a suit for manslaughter against Flosi Thord's son, to plead it for the

slaying of Helgi Njal's son, with all those proofs which have to follow the suit. Thou handest over to me this suit to plead and to settle, and to enjoy all rights in it, as though I were the rightful next of kin. Thou handest it over to me by law, and I take it from thee by law.""

For the defense:

137. OF EYJOLF BOLVERK'S SON
http://omacl.org/Njal/9part.html
There was a man named Eyjolf. He was the son of Bolverk, the son of Eyjolf the Guileful, of Otterdale (1). Eyjolf was a man of great rank, and best skilled in law of all men, so that some said he was the third best lawyer in Iceland. He was the fairest in face of all men, tall and strong, and there was the making of a great chief in him. He was greedy of money, like the rest of his kinsfolk. ..."
Then Flosi said, "... We wish to ask for thy help, Eyjolf, and that thou wilt stand by us in our suits, and go to the court with us, and undertake the defence, if there be any, and plead it for us, and stand by us in all things that may happen at this Thing...."
Then Eyjolf arose, and Flosi too, and they took one another by the hand; and so Eyjolf undertook the whole defence of the suit off Flosi's hands, and so, too, if any suit arose out of the defence, for it often happens that what is a defence in one suit, is a plaintiff's plea in another. So he took upon him all the proofs and proceedings which belonged to those suits, whether they were to be pleaded before the Quarter Court or the Fifth Court. Flosi handed them over in lawful form, and Eyjolf took them in lawful form, and then he said to Flosi and Bjarni, "Now I have undertaken this defence just as ye asked, but my wish it is that ye should still keep it secret at first; but if the matter comes into the Fifth Court, then be most careful not to say ye have given goods for my help."

Pleadings by representatives of the true parties in interest

CHAPTER 141. NOW MEN GO TO THE COURTS

http://omacl.org/Njal/10part.html
Mord summons Flosi, or whoever has taken his case:
"Again Mord said, "I take witness to this, that I bid Flosi Thord's son, or any other man who has undertaken the defence made over to him by Flosi, to listen for him to my oath, and to my declaration of my suit, and to all the proofs and proceedings which I am about to bring forward against him; I bid him by a lawful bidding before the court, so that the judges may hear it across the court."
"Then Mord took witness and said, "I take witness to this that I give notice of an assault laid down by law against Flosi Thord's son, for that be rushed at Helgi Njal's son and dealt him a brain, or a body, or a marrow wound, which proved a death-wound, and from which Helgi got his death. I say that in this suit he ought to be made a guilty man, an outlaw, not to be fed, not to be forwarded, not to be helped or harboured in any need. I say that all his goods are forfeited, half to me and half to the men of the Quarter, who have a right by law to take his forfeited goods. I give notice of this suit for manslaughter in the Quarter Court into which this suit ought by law to come. I give notice of this lawful notice; I give notice in the hearing of all men on the Hill of Laws; I give notice of this suit to be pleaded this summer, and of full outlawry against Flosi Thord's son; I give notice of a suit which Thorgeir Thorir's son has handed over to me ..."
"... Then Eyjolf took witness. "I take witness to this," said he, "that I challenge these two men out of the inquest" -- here he named them both -- "for that sake that they are lodgers, but not householders; I do not allow you two to sit on the inquest, for now a lawful challenge has overtaken you; I challenge you both and set you aside out of the inquest, by the rightful custom of the Althing and by the law of the land."

There is plenty more of the same: arguments about the application of law to facts, on behalf of another person, for remuneration. If you did the above in any court in Washington State, you would be lawyering, and you had better have a current lawyer's license.

See also Hrafnkels Saga in which Sámr formally accepts the case from Þorbjörn so that he effectively becomes the plaintiff. rewinn 06:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

But to draw the inference that such ancient behavior is analogous to modern lawyering is itself original research unless supported by a citation to a secondary source drawing that inference. The problem with citing old sources translated from other languages is that the translator's bias (or desire to see what one wants to see) may have "colored" the translation (I took a semester of comp lit in college and learned all about this problem). However, the similarity you have pointed out is intriguing, I'm sure some law review article somewhere must have noted it, and I will look out for a secondary source to that effect. Of course, this week I am really busy with motion practice, so that might take a while.--Coolcaesar 06:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
  • If primary sources are to be rejected because of original research, and secondary sources are to rejected because they interject the bias of editors, wikipedia will be much abbreviated.
  • How could translation bias result in Mord and Eyjolf arguing points of law for their respective clients? Are there any authorities that suggest, for example, that Icelandic "laws" were not really "laws" ... and if this were the case, why could not the same be said of the Code of Hammurabi?
  • All contributions to wikipedia involve the inference that the material is relevant. If the fact of inclusion is unallowable original research, the wikipedia will be much abbreviated. rewinn 16:38, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm always careful about translation issues as a student of history and philosophy. For example, the English use of the word "heaven" in the term Son of Heaven to refer to the Emperor of China is not quite accurate. The terms "God" and "heaven" in the European Christian sense were extremely difficult for European missionaries to translate into Chinese in the 19th century because the Chinese language as it existed then did not have any accurate, direct one-to-one equivalents for those words (and to some degree still does not). The Italian word prego does not translate easily into English. Neither does the German word Geist. Or the Japanese word ikki. Many languages like Latin have no definite article so it is very difficult to translate English passages into Latin when they rely heavily on the word "the." I can go on and on about this but you get the idea. When one is dealing with pre-industrial societies prior to the rise of the modern nation-state, it is very important to avoid imposing modern conceptions of law upon them. Retroactively imposing modern conceptualizations upon the past is known as the Whiggish approach to history, and it's strongly deprecated among modern historians, who try to understand the past on its own terms.
The point I'm trying to get across is that the Icelandic sagas are valid sources for what they describe, but to then draw the inference that what they describe is lawyering is a step too far. For example, I would cite the case of Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins when discussing the actual rule articulated in that case, but I would not cite Pruneyard itself to support the assertion that Pruneyard is a major case in constitutional law (even though that's a reasonable inference). Rather, I would cite a law review article for that additional inference, which is what I've actually done at Pruneyard Shopping Center.--Coolcaesar 05:07, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
None of the preceeding addresses whether what is described in the saga is lawyering. Please describe in what way the actions cited above by Mord and Eyjolf were not lawyering.
  • If the argument is that it cannot be lawyering because it was not in English and not in the 21st century, fine; but the article must be retitled Lawyering (21st Century United States)
  • Things will go more smoothly without lectures on general principles of history and language; you are not the only person ever to have read a book or attended college classes.
rewinn 02:40, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
The point I'm getting at is that the inference you're drawing is not so obvious as to be inherently obvious without further explanation. Yes, the behavior in those passages appears to be lawyering at first glance, but just because it superficially appears to be lawyering does not mean it is actual lawyering unless one is using a translation with full annotations explaning all possible connotations of nearly every word in the original (which is how Shakespeare and Chaucer are properly studied since the structure of English itself has changed so dramatically from their time). The examples I gave are to show that what appears to be lawyering may be the result of distortions in translation (just as novice laypersons often interpret artifacts in JPEG images to be UFOs or signs of extraterrestrial life, since they are unfamiliar with the underlying vagaries of the discrete cosine transform). Another example of how translation is difficult: Try running some legal language like a credit card cardmember agreement on a round trip through the machine translator at babelfish.altavista.com. Pick a totally unrelated language like Japanese. You'll get a good laugh at the garbage that comes out.
I'm always skeptical about translated sources unless they're fully annotated to show the original "flavor" the translator is trying bring across, however incompletely. The longer the gap in time, place, and language, the more likely that the meaning has been distorted in translation because how past cultures conceptualized everything is just so different from the way we think today. That's why I'd rather rely on a secondary source such as a law review article by a law professor who is thoroughly familiar with Icelandic literature and has the experience and knowledge to draw that inference.
I was just skimming some sources on Infotrac and Google Books this evening and it looks like you're coming at this, whether you realize it or not, from the Malinowski school of legal anthropology which broadly treats any cultural norm as a form of law (and by extension anything that looks like lawyering as lawyering). I'm coming at this issue from a political science perspective which treats law as an extension of the state or sovereign and treats lawyering as an extension of the state's efforts to provide efficient dispute resolution by providing for private representation of parties by expert professionals.
Anyway, I'm still looking for a source which directly calls what's happening in the Iceland sagas lawyering. Notably, William Ian Miller in his book Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland doesn't actually use term "lawyering" in his cogent analysis of the Icelandic legal system as described in the sagas (yes, I used Google Books' full text search). If you run the search on Google Books for that book and then drill down by searching within it for the term "lawyers," you'll come across a great summary of the problem of defining "law" in legal anthropology in Endnote 1 to Chapter 7, on page 356. --Coolcaesar 06:43, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
* Please describe in what way the actions cited above by Mord and Eyjolf were not lawyering.
* If your argument is that law is something determined by the state, then you are defining out of existence a lot of private law and, in the case of Iceland, law that was created specifically to avoid the creation of a classical state. Read David Friedmann (son of Milton Friedmann but brilliant in his own right) on the subject. rewinn 05:54, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, the first example is clearly an assignment. Contingency fee is allowed in the U.S. today only because the client technically remains the master of the case (and that's why many legal systems prohibit such agreements, because of the fear that the lawyer, with his conniving superior knowledge of contract law, will become the de facto master of the case and stir up frivolous litigation). Assignment means the buyer becomes the master of the case and steps into the shoes of the person selling his claim. That's not really lawyering; it's more like acting like a collection agency!
As for the other ones, I will concede that they look superficially like lawyering. But again, please see Wikipedia:No original research, particularly section 2.2 on "Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources," which explains that "Any interpretation of primary source material requires a secondary source." The fact is, you are making an interpretation of the material which goes beyond the assertions in the material themselves. There is nothing in Njalssaga itself where the characters specifically assert that what they are doing is lawyering. You are drawing an inference to support a particular interpretation using your own specialized knowledge in combination with the text, which I agree with because I share such specialized knowledge. But Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia written for a general audience, nearly all of whom lack such knowledge. The interpretation needs to be supported with a secondary source.
Finally, I looked at David Friedman's site and was unimpressed. In contrast, Richard Posner's law and economics analysis is infused with an intimate understanding of how the legal system works, because he actually practiced as an assistant to the Solicitor General before becoming a professor and then a judge. But like most economists, David Friedman's understanding of dispute resolution processes seems to be somewhat superficial, since he has not endured the rigorous study of thousands of opinions which is required for the J.D. My own sympathies in legal philosophy are with more well-known intellects like John Rawls and Robert Nozick---it was Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia which caused me to turn away from my brief dalliance with anarcho-capitalism when I was younger. Plus, my thorough knowledge of history makes me quite sympathetic to Nozick's essential assumption that the state has a natural monopoly. Might makes right, which then becomes the law. --Coolcaesar 08:48, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It appears that in characterizing the plaintiff's lawyer's action as "assignment" you are saying that therefore further action was not lawyering; this is an unfortunate application of cultural myopy, because assignment was the approved form of lawyering in medieval Iceland, medieval Europe in general and in Graeco-Roman lawyering.

As discussed above, if you wish to define "lawyering" as only legal advocacy in the modern United States, then simply re-title the article Advocacy in Modern United States.

I have addressed your baseless claims of OR above and since you add nothing to your claim, need add nothing more. rewinn 03:14, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Can I just say that it is concerning to me that the article has had a paragraph added that says that the term lawyer in the article is to be confined to its US meaning. Surely that is POV and not something we shoudl approve of in wikipedia. Perhaps it would be better to break the article up and have specifically US things in one place. For example, a solicitor is very much a core member of the concept of lawyer, and even someone in the US would accept they were such, but most have limited rights of advocacy and the majority never conduct advocacy (and would not do so). By contrast very few barristers have the right to conduct litigation (I don't). To say none of us are proper lawyers (there would be almost no lawyers in the united kingdom if this were true) is very very POV. Its fine to note a US specific idea and useful but then the page becomes US specific. Francis Davey 09:36, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Agree. Legal Advocacy (United States), Legal Advocacy (United Kingdom), Legal Advocacy (Middle Ages) et cetera would be a fruitful approach, rather than forcing this diverse subject into one page. rewinn 01:18, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Well (to Rewinn), even if you're not watching this now, I'm going to state my rebuttal just in case you do come back. In response to Rewinn's position that he has addressed my baseless claims of OR, I reiterate that he has not responded to the issues I raised above. The accuracy of translation and what can be properly inferred from the work itself are two separate issues, both of which I believe could be addressed by a citation to a reliable secondary source (that is, an article in a respectable journal). Issue one: the translation could be a distortion as I already explained. Issue two: the translation could be perfect but the work itself does not assert that a particular person is a lawyer; therefore, to draw the conclusion that so-and-so is doing lawyering is a subjective interpretation (based on one's knowledge acquired externally of this particular text) which according to Wikipedia:No original research must be supported by citation to a secondary source drafted by someone with the experience and knowledge capable of authoritatively making that interpretation. This is a very subtle concept, like the difference between hearsay and nonhearsay, but any lawyer capable of understanding the bar exma should be capable of understanding it.
Second, it seems to me that you subscribe to the Malinowski view of legal anthropology. I have been reading bits and pieces of a textbook on legal anthropology (in between drafting motions over the past week). The textbook says that Malinowski's functionalist views were very popular and influential during the mid-20th century but that they no longer have any currency. I see no need for this article to adopt a broad view of lawyering which has been rejected by most contemporary anthropologists who specialize in law.
As for Francis Davey, I understand your concerns, but I don't see much of a problem. The definition of practice of law (which the Wikipedia article on that subject summarizes in a crude but accurate fashion) broadly encompasses everything that solicitors and barristers do. If your concern is the focus on the phrase "licensed attorneys," I agree that is U.S.-specific and I will modify the qualifying clause accordingly. --Coolcaesar 08:00, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Judges are Lawyers (controversy)

The question whether judges are lawyers, discussed above, needs its own clean thread.

  • In Washington State, judges that were lawyers before they were elected judges remain lawyers. They remain members of the Washington State Bar Association, and merely have their status changed to "Judicial". When they go off Judicial status, they are not required to re-take the Bar Exam to resume law practice.
  • As for California, I doubt that judges who cease being judges must re-take the bar exam.
  • At most, lawyers who become judges are bound by the canons of judicial ethics not to practice law, but they do not cease to be lawyers.
  • The phrase "lawyers and judges" is not dispositive as to a distinction between the two; rather it is a figure of speech denoting the difference between those currently able to argue in court and those who hear the arguements.
  • To define lawyers as those who argue in court and then argue that judges cannot be lawyers because they do not argue in court is merely circular. Judges are proud to be lawyers; ask one!

rewinn 06:14, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

That's odd. My understanding is that in California we regard the "lawyer" or "attorney" status as something you go through on the way to becoming a judge but not a status one actually retains while being a judge. A judge has to put his State Bar membership aside (as required by the California Constitution) and then gets it back automatically when he resigns from the bench. And yes, I do know a couple of judges personally, as well as several relatives of judges, and several attorneys who have clerked for judges.
Every judicial opinion I've ever read (and I probably read well over 2,000 of them in law school) has always treated the categories as exclusive, not overlapping. It's not a mere figure of speech, it's the way that the terms are actually used. A lawyer is an attorney who is a person who practices law. A judge doesn't practice law, a judge is a person who sits in a court and listens to arguments from people who practice law (plus the occasional hapless pro se litigant). --Coolcaesar 07:46, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
I am sorry to keep on emphasising this point -- but I just don't want anything POV in the article -- an attorney is only one kind of a lawyer. In origin (and this is your history just as much as it is mine), attorneys did only one kind of lawyering. I am not an attorney. I am on any analysis a lawyer, but I cannot conduct litigation. Francis Davey 19:12, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
  • If judges are not lawyers because they do not practice law, then likewise law professors are not lawyers because they do not practice law.
  • I query whether 2,000 American judicial decisions actually turn on the point whether a judge is a lawyer. In each particular case, some people are the lawyers and some are the judges, but that does not mean that in a larger sense, the judges are also lawyers. There are (at least) two different meanings to the word "lawyer": one is case-specific, and the other refers to a status earned by education et cetera.
rewinn 16:28, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
About the decisions: it's not so much whether they turned on that point, it's about how the terms were actually used to distinguish between two categories, or classes of objects (I'm dropping into logic here). This is the difference between a rule that is formally announced by a court, versus a rule that is implicit in its very actions. See Scalia's famously scathing dissent in Dickerson v. United States, where he points out what the court is really doing versus what it says it is doing.
And yes, law professors aren't real lawyers if they aren't licensed. In fact, my Harvard-trained civil procedure professor was not licensed to practice in California and had never practiced law. His only "real world" legal experience was one year of clerking at the Supreme Court. Often times people would ask him nitty-gritty tactical questions and he would say, "I don't know. Ask a real lawyer." --Coolcaesar 08:09, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
From your quote, your law professor considered himself to be a lawyer, just not a real lawyer. Q.E.D.
To the extent that this article contains assertions that in American English, the word "lawyer" is synonyomous with "advocate", it is OR. The fact is, there are several distinguishable senses to the word "lawyer" depending upon the context in which it is used. Law professors *are* lawyers; they just are not *advocates*. What is the difficulty in recognizing this? rewinn 02:57, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
He was being sarcastic; he considered himself to be a law-trained person, not a lawyer! Anyway, the difficulty I'm having is that your position smells like original research in violation of core policy Wikipedia:No original research because in three years of law school and almost one year as a licensed attorney I have never seen in American English the usage you assert exists. I just checked the definition in four major dictionaries. Take a look at Encarta [11], American Heritage [12], Merriam-Webster [13], and Cambridge (the American English version) [14]. Along with Black's, all of these dictionaries support my position --- that "lawyer" in American English is limited to people who actually practice law. As you know, or should know, lexicographers make it their trade to be sensitive to the way people actually use words. If the term was regularly used in American English to mean judges or other types of legal professionals, they could have easily added in those categories as alternate definitions, but they did not. I find it highly unlikely that lexicographers at five separate major dictionaries do not know what they are doing, especially when lawyers generate more words and use up more trees than practically any other profession (words are our weapons, after all). --Coolcaesar 05:35, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
  • The 1st problem is that you are writing an article about legal advocacy in the United States, but have entitled it "Lawyer". As others have remarked, this is incorrect. Renaming it to Lawyer (United States) would be better.
  • The 2nd problem is that you cite 1 year of legal experience as making you qualified to define what is and is not lawyering. I suggest that 1 year of experience makes no-one an expert on any significant subject (and of course it would be OR on your part to cite your own legal career experience as an authority.) I passed my first bar exam over a decade ago and would hesitate to declare myself an expert on anything except for my very narrow area. Please stick to authorities.
  • As to the ordinary English use of "lawyer", with very little work, you will find articles in which ordinary people complain that lawyers make the laws. They are of course referring to lawyers in legislatures, some of whom are not lawyers and none of whom are acting as advocates in their capacity as legislators.
  • Likewise, ordinary people believe that law professors are lawyers; and certainly law professors believe they are part of the community of lawyers. Just because you do not see that there are many meanings to "lawyer" does not mean that such meanings do not exist.
  • BLS includes Academe and Judicial clerkships as types of lawyers in the table at the bottom here: http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos053.htm
  • National Association of Law Placement lists Judicial Clerkships along with other lawyer jobs
  • If you want to write an article about legal advocacy in the United States, go ahead. You've done a lot of work that this would fit under quite well. There is really no reason for you to object so strenuously to your work being editted; such is the nature of wikiPedia.
  • Tell ya what I'm just gonna un-watch this page. It's not worth trying to reason with you. Do as you wish. rewinn 19:19, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Um, I just cited significant authorities (some of the most widely used dictionaries in the United States), but you apparently reacted with your heart rather than your head. And in case you haven't noticed, I've been careful to draw upon a broad variety of sources to make sure this article covers lawyering in countries around the world. There is already an article on lawyering in the United States: Attorney at law.
I'm sorry it turned out that we disagree so strongly, but anyway, now that you have broken off the debate, I can concentrate on spending my very small amount of spare time on researching what exactly happened to lawyers after the Roman Empire fell and how they gradually came back during the Renaissance. Apparently canon law associated with the Catholic Church helped keep lawyering alive through the Dark Ages (sort of) but I'm still trying to figure that out. I will also keep an eye out for any source that describes what Icelanders did as lawyering, but if I don't see one, I'm going to take a conservative stance on what constitutes lawyering and delete the reference to them.--Coolcaesar 08:22, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Why I will be removing recent unsourced edits

Someone at 195.152.50.3 recently inserted some rather strange edits into this article which I plan to remove soon. First of all, law firms are usually ranked by profits (Am Law 100) or number of attorneys (National Law Journal 250), not turnover. In the United States, turnover (the percentage of a workforce which needs to be replaced per year) is usually an indicator of the instability of a company or firm. Second, the statistics which I copied from Professor Friedman's book clearly referred to total number of lawyers, not equity partners. Friedman holds an endowed chair at Stanford University and is the top American legal historian alive right now; indeed, the vast majority of public libraries that can afford only one or two general legal history books will usually stock his History of American Law and History of American Law in the 20th Century (I realized this during my ongoing search for good sources for this article). I think we can safely assume that his numbers are accurate. --Coolcaesar 02:27, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Back from vacation with fresh eyes

When involved in a flamewar, as above, it's often helpful to take a time off and do other useful things on other wiki articles. Now that I'm back with fresh eyes (...ah, it was a pleasant time, researching the Metallic Metals Act and suchlike...) I see that this article, although vigorously researched, is just tries too hard to cover too much ground. Statements such as "Before a lawyer can accept a client's case, he or she must interview the client..." are simply incorrect; while such an action is wise and, in many jurisdictions, necessary to avoid ethical issues, the fact is that in many jurisdictions, a lawyer can (perhaps unintentionally) accept a case without having met the client what-so-ever. Examples: class-action suits; public defenders; "next-friend" cases; and instances in which an attorney-client relationship forms due to unwise conduct of the lawyer. And we haven't even gotten to what may happen outside of the American system. An accurate depiction of what it takes for a lawyer-client relationship to form would require a lengthy article on its own. This is merely an example of the difficulty of the article; I suggest that the topic of "lawyering" should be handled in outline form, with each major topic a separate article. rewinn 20:22, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

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