A lawyer or attorney at law is a person licensed by the state to advise clients in legal matters and represent them in courts of law (and in other forms of dispute resolution). Most countries today require professional law advisors in their judicial systems. Lawyers have many names in different countries—including "advocate," "attorney," "barrister," "counselor," "civil law notary", and "solicitor"—and many of these names indicate specific classes or ranks of jurists.

Law is traditionally considered to be a learned profession.

The role of the lawyer can vary significantly across legal jurisdictions. For instance, in some countries, lawyers may be required to lead or manage criminal investigations. In the United States, lawyers have taken over functions that used to be (and in some countries, still are) performed by other professionals, such as the civil law notary or even by non-professionals.

What Lawyers Actually Do:

Unlike most other nations, the American legal system does not draw a strong line between solicitors and barristers, nor does it relegate most routine work to notary publics.

Once accepted by the bar association of a state, an American lawyer may file legal pleadings and argue cases in any court in that state (either federal or state), provide legal advice to clients, and draft important legal documents (like wills, trusts, deeds, and contracts). American lawyers use the term lawyering to refer to the art of practicing law.

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

Practicing law can be broadly generalized as: (1) interviewing the client and identifying what is their legal matter or dispute, (2) "spotting" the discrete legal and factual issues embedded within the client's larger problem, (3) systematically researching each issue, and (4) designing a solution that resolves at least some of the issues, if not all, and executing it through specific tasks like drafting a contract or filing a motion with a court. Most academic legal training is directed to "issue spotting," how to research facts and law, and how to argue both the facts and law in favor of either side in any case.

Contrary to the media image of lawyers, virtually all serious legal work requires hours of in-depth research in a law library or in an electronic database like Westlaw or LexisNexis. Very few television programs and movies accurately portray the long nights surrounded by a pile of books or printouts which form the core of the average American lawyer's occupational life.

In litigation, lawyers also spend a lot of time discovering the facts of the case, in order to develop a "theory of the case" that integrates facts and law in a way most favorable to their client. Sadly, too often the discovery phase of a case turns into an unpleasant war of attrition over petty technicalities. Most lawyers would agree that approximately 50 to 70% of all funds spent on legal services in the U.S. go towards discovery costs.

Most American lawyers are highly specialized in one field or another. Often dichotomies are drawn between different types of lawyers, but these are neither fixed nor formal lines. Examples include:

■  Litigators (who sue and defend) v. transactional lawyers (who draft and advise)

■  Solos and small firms (who can't afford to litigate every little issue) v. big firms (who
    can)

■  Plaintiffs' lawyers (solos and small firms who represent individuals on contingent fee
    agreements) v. defendants' lawyers (big firms billing large corporations by the hour)

■  Trial lawyers (who argue the facts like Johnnie Cochran) v. appellate lawyers (who
    argue the law like David Boies)

Outside counsel (law firms) v. in-house counsel (corporate legal department)

About half of American attorneys work as solos or in small firms. See law firm. There are also many midsize firms, with anywhere from 50 to 200 lawyers, and since the 1970s, some law firms have merged to form giant "megafirms" with 1,000 lawyers or more.

Unlike other common law jurisdictions, there is nothing to prevent an American lawyer from controlling and arguing his case at each level of the judiciary through its entire lifecycle. However, cases which advance to the appellate level, particularly to the U.S. Supreme Court, are often assigned to experienced appellate practitioners or firms. Nonetheless, in some cases, a lawyer may handle his or her case from the trial level all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. A notable example of this is the Brown v. Board of Education litigation, where the same trial team handled the case from start to finish.

Who can do legal work besides lawyers?

Engaging in the kind of work customarily done by lawyers, without a valid, current license to do so, is the "unauthorized practice of law", which is punishable as a crime in most jurisdictions. In some jurisdictions, the definition of the practice of law is quite strict; persons have been successfully prosecuted for publishing do-it-yourself will forms and for representing special-education children in federal proceedings as specifically allowed by federal law.

A person who has a J.D. but is not admitted to any bar is not a lawyer. However, some courts allow law students to act as "certified student attorneys" after the satisfactory completion of their first year of law school and the completion of particular second- and third-year courses such as Evidence.

Paradoxically, some jurisdictions will allow a non-lawyer to sit as a judge, usually in lower courts or in hearings by governmental agencies, even though a non-lawyer may not practice before these same courts.