THE TYPE OF LAWYER

Personal Injury Lawyer

A personal injury lawyer is a lawyer who provides legal representation to those who claim to have been injured, physically or psychologically, as a result of the negligence or wrongdoing of another person, company, government agency, or other entity. Thus, personal injury lawyers tend to be especially knowledgeable and have more experience with regard to the area of law known as tort law, which includes civil wrongs and economic or non-economic damages to a person’s property, reputation, or rights.

Even though personal injury lawyers are trained and licensed to practice virtually any field of law, they generally only handle cases that fall under tort law including, but not limited to: work injuries, automobile and other accidents, defective products, medical mistakes, slip and fall accidents, and more.

The expression "trial lawyers" can refer to personal injury lawyers, even though most cases handled by personal injury lawyers settle rather than going to trial and other types of lawyers, such as defendants' lawyers and criminal prosecutors, also appear in trials.

Responsibilities

A personal injury lawyer has numerous responsibilities in serving his or her clients. These responsibilities encompass both professional and ethical rules and codes of conduct set forth by state bar associations where the lawyers are licensed. Once licensed to practice law by their state bar association, lawyers are legally permitted to file legal complaints, argue cases in state court, draft legal documents, and offer legal advice to victims of personal injury.

Also referred to as a plaintiff lawyer. a personal injury lawyer is responsible for interviewing prospective clients and evaluating their cases to determine the legal matter, identify the distinct issues rooted within the plaintiff’s larger problem, and extensively research every issue to build a strong case. The ultimate professional responsibility of a personal injury lawyer is to help plaintiffs obtain the justice and compensation they deserve for their losses and suffering through advocacy, oral arguments, client counseling, and legal advice.

Personal injury lawyers must also adhere to strict standards of legal ethics when dealing with clients. While the guidelines vary according to state, the basic codes of conduct state that a lawyer must knowledgeably evaluate legal matters and exercise competence in any legal matter undertaken. Moreover, personal injury lawyers owe their clients a duty of loyalty and confidentiality and must work to protect their clients’ best interests.

Corporate Lawyer

A corporate lawyer is a lawyer who specializes in corporations law. As of 2004, there were 67,000 corporate lawyers in the United States, working on average for 50 hours per week, with a mean starting salary of USD64,000, rising to USD93,700 after 5 years and USD139,000 after 10–15 years.

The role of a corporate lawyer is to ensure the legality of commercial transactions, advising corporations on their legal rights and duties, including the duties and responsibilities of corporate officers. In order to do this, they must have knowledge of aspects of contract law, tax law, accounting, securities law, bankruptcy, intellectual property rights, licensing, zoning laws, and the laws specific to the business of the corporations that they work for.

The practice of corporate law is less adversarial than that of trial law. Lawyers for both sides of a commercial transaction are less opponents than facilitators. One lawyer (quoted by Bernstein) characterizes them as "the handmaidens of the deal". Transactions take place amongst peers. There are rarely wronged parties, underdogs, or inequities in the financial means of the participants. Corporate lawyers structure those transactions, draft documents, review agreements, negotiate deals, and attend meetings.

What areas of corporate law a corporate lawyer experiences depend from where the firm that he/she works for is, geographically, and how large it is. A small-town corporate lawyer in a small firm may deal in many short-term jobs such as drafting wills, divorce settlements, and real estate transactions, whereas a corporate lawyer in a large city firm may spend many months devoted to negotiating a single business transaction. Similarly, different firms may organize their subdivisions in different ways. Not all will include mergers and acquisitions under the umbrella of a corporate law division, for example.

Some corporate lawyers become partners in their firms. Others become in-house counsel for corporations. Others still migrate into other professions such as investment banking and teaching
Some publications read by those in the profession include Global Legal Studies, Lawyers Weekly, and the National Law Journal

Contract Attorneys

In the beginning, the work of contract attorneys often entailed such activities as document review in response to a document subpoena or a request for production of documents. In such projects, contract attorneys were called upon to review tens of thousands, if not millions, of pages of documents and mark them as responsive to a particular request, or protected as attorney work product or under the attorney-client privilege. Large firms quickly learned that contract attorneys could perform this work much more cost effectively than high-priced associates.

The role of the contract attorney has evolved, and now many contract, or freelance, attorneys perform legal research, draft legal briefs, and provide a full range of other services to law firms of all sizes. These attorneys typically work for themselves, rather than for temporary agencies, and provide their services to other law firms on an as-needed basis.

Some people who hold juris doctor degrees, but who are awaiting bar admission, work as temporary professionals in law firms doing the same type of work as contract attorneys. In addition, a law firm may, due to a conflict of interest, be required to hire a Cumis counsel in certain cases.

Contract attorneys typically work on a project by project basis and are not full-time law firm employees. However, an increasing trend in contract law is to develop long-lasting relationships with firms that regularly or semi-regularly send work to the contract attorney. Many small firms find that the use of contract attorneys provides them the flexibility to grow their business without hiring salaried employees.

According to the American Bar Association, law firms can add a surcharge to the fees of their contract attorneys so long as the final fee charged to the client is reasonable. Particularly in a slowing economy, the use of contract attorneys gives firms a competitive edge in the marketplace, helping them to control costs while increasing profitability.

Assigned Counsel Work in Criminal Defense

In counties without a public defender or without a alternate defender, a contract attorney may be hired to do assigned counsel work. A legal aid group may be hired to do such work as if a temporary work agency, such as the Legal Aid Society of New York City. Other states or counties may have a panel of lawyers who act as contract attorneys. Some critics of this system have accused the method of leading to ineffective assistance of counsel in criminal cases.

Corporation Counsel

The Corporation Counsel is the title given to the chief legal officer in some municipal and county jurisdictions, who handles civil claims against the city, including negotiating settlements and defending the city when it is sued. Most corporation counsels do not prosecute criminal cases, though some prosecute traffic and local ordinance violations. In Washington D.C., the former Corporation Counsel, now known as Attorney General, prosecutes adult misdemeanors and juvenile delinquency cases in addition to traffic and local ordinance violations.The cities of New York, and Chicago, among others, use this title. Counties in Hawaii and Wisconsin have Corporation Counsels as well.

Counsel or a Counselor

A counsel or a counsellor gives advice, more particularly in legal matters. The legal system in England uses the term counsel as an approximate synonym for a barrister-at-law or solicitor advocate, and may apply it to mean either a single person who pleads a cause, or collectively, the body of barristers or solicitor advocates engaged in a case.

The difference between "Barrister" and "Counsel" is subtle. "Barrister" is a professional title awarded by one of the four Inns of Court, and is used in a barrister's private, academic or professional capacity. "Counsel" is used to refer to a barrister or solicitor advocate who is instructed on a particular case. It is customary to use the third person when addressing a barrister or solicitor advocate instructed on a case: "Counsel is asked to advise" rather than "You are asked to advise".

The legal term counsellor, or, more fully, counsellor-at-law, became practically obsolete in England, but continued in use locally in Ireland as an equivalent to barrister where a Senior Counsel (S.C.) is equivalent to the English Queen's Counsel (Q.C.}

In the United States of America, the term counselor-at-law designates, specifically, an attorney admitted to practice in all courts of law; but as the United States legal system makes no formal division of the legal profession into two classes, as in England, most US citizens use the term loosely in the same sense as lawyer, meaning one who versed in (or practising) law.

In the United States and Canada many large and midsize law firms have lawyers with the job title of "counsel", "special counsel" or "of counsel". These lawyers are employees of the firm like associates, although some firms have an independent contractor relationship with them. But unlike associates, and more like partners, they generally have their own clients, manage their own files, and supervise associates. For more information, see the Law firm article.

Country Lawyer

Country Lawyer – or county-seat lawyer — refers to an attorney who has completed little or no formal legal training and is a member of the county or state bar. Traditionally, these lawyers practiced general law in a rural setting.

While perhaps a far cry from the “modern? image of an attorney working at a big firm in a big city, the opportunity to become a lawyer without graduating law school is still available in six U.S. states (California, Maine, New York, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming) through various apprenticeship programs.

Popularized by such figures as Abraham Lincoln, Clarence Darrow and Robert H. Jackson, the country lawyer’s image has become that of advocate and protector of the common man. According to Frances Lyman Windolph, "the true test of the country lawyer is not the size or importance of the community in which he does his work, but rather the sort of work which he does and the sort of people for whom he does it…If a lawyer performs every sort of legal service for every sort of client — the poor and the lowly as well as the rich and the well born — he is, within my definition at least, a country lawyer."In a famous essay Robert Jackson offered his own description of the "The County-Seat Lawyer".

County Attorney

A county attorney in many areas of the United States is the chief legal officer for a county or local judicial district. It is usually an elected position. The role of the county attorney can be similar to or complementary to that of a local State's Attorney, Commonwealth's Attorney or District Attorney.

In some jurisdictions, the county attorney oversees the operations of local prosecutors with respect to violations of county ordinances. In other jurisdictions, the county attorney prosecutes traffic matters and/or misdemeanors. In some states the county attorney prosecutes violations of state laws to the extent that the state permits local prosecution of these. County attorneys do not prosecute federal crimes, which are the jurisdiction of a United States Attorney.

Many county attorneys also bear responsibilities not related to criminal prosecution. These include defending the county against civil suits, occasionally initiating such suits on behalf of the county, preparing or reviewing contracts entered into by the county and providing legal advice and counsel to local government. In some jurisdictions, the county attorney does not handle any criminal matters at all, but serves only as the legal counsel to the county.

For example, in Arizona and Montana a County Attorney represents the county and state within their county, prosecutes all felonies occurring within the county, and prosecutes misdemeanors occurring within unincorporated areas of the county.

Criminal Defense Lawyer

A lawyer specializing in the defense of individuals and companies charged with criminal conduct. In the United States, criminal defense lawyers deal small with the international problems surrounding the apprehension, searches of client or property not arrest until noted guilty of his or her client (4th Amendment), as well as any statements the client may have made (5th Amendment). Criminal defense lawyers also deal with the personality of the crimes his or her clients are charged with. it may get personal . In the United States criminal defendants are entitled to the presumption of innocence until prosecutors prove each essential element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Serious crimes in the United States are tried to juries of twelve people and the jury must be unanimous in its verdict to either convict or acquit the defendant. A split in the jury is often called a "hung jury" and may result in a retrial of the defendant. Criminal defense lawyers actively pursue their client's cause through all stages of a criminal prosecution.

Many criminal defense lawyers in the United States are employed by governmental entities (States, Counties, etc) and are often referred to as "Public Defenders." Often Public Defenders are fresh law school graduates seeking to gain quick courtroom experience, but there are many older, extremely well experienced lawyers who have made public defending a lifetime advocation. There are also private defense lawyers who are retained by individual clients on a case by case basis.

Criminal defense work can be intimidating to some lawyers as the specter of a client going to jail for long periods of time or even being subjected to capital punishment looms over some defendants. Because of this and other factors, criminal defense lawyers tend to be a special breed of lawyers.

European Lawyer

A European lawyer, beyond the self-evident definition of 'a lawyer in Europe', also refers to a specific provision under European Communities (Services of Lawyers) Order 1978, which permits a lawyer to practice in European countries they are not licensed in.

The order contains a list of countries of origin and the designations which the order applies to, for example , a professional "entitled to pursue his professional activities" as either a "asianajaja" or an "advokat" in Finland, may practice Europe-wide as an "European lawyer".

The order also imposes limitations on the types of legal work which may be carried out by such persons. European lawyers practicing outside their country of origin must be associated with appropriate co-counsel and upon demand by a competent authority they must verify their status

General Counsel

A general counsel is the chief lawyer of a legal department, usually in a corporation or government department. The term is most used in the United States The status and prominence of the general counsel has grown much over the past 10 years as is evidenced by the large number of lawyers who come into the role from private practice.

In the United Kingdom a group of general counsel, called the GC100, was officially launched on 9th March 2005 and brings together the senior legal officers of more than 85 FTSE100 companies. The GC100 group was created in response to the increasing volume and complexity of domestic and international law and regulation which impacts on UK listed companies. The group was formed with the support of Practical Law Company which acts as its secretariat.

The main objectives of the GC100 are to:

Provide a forum for practical and business focused input on key areas of legislative and policy reform common to UK listed companies.Enable members to share best practice in relation to law, risk management, compliance and other areas of common interest.

Membership of the GC100 is by invitation only. At the Group AGM on the 16 January 2007 members voted in favour of extending membership to company secretaries as well as general counsel in the FTSE100. The formal name of the GC100 is , "The Association of General Counsel and Company Secretaries of the FTSE100", although it will continue to be known as the GC100.

Mark Harding, the first chair of the GC100 has stated that the GC100 is not a campaigning body, although they work closely with the FD100 (a similar grouping of blue chip finance directors).

Trademark Attorney

A trademark attorney or in the alternative spelling trade mark attorney, also known as a trademark lawyer if qualified as a lawyer, is a person who is qualified to act in matters involving trademark law and practice.

A trade mark attorney frequently begins his or her career by joining a firm of trade mark attorneys, or a firm of patent agents with a department specialising in trade mark work. Trade mark attorneys are also employed by large companies which have enough trade mark interests to need an attorney just to deal with their own matters.

The responsibilities of a trademark attorney include advising on the adoption and selection of new trademarks; filing and prosecuting applications to register trademarks; advising on the use and registration of trademarks; handling trademark oppositions, revocations, invalidations and assignments; carry out searches; and advising on trademark infringement matters.

Trademark attorneys are often regulated as a profession, in which case they must pass a series of examinations, comply with other requirements, and observe professional ethics and standards in order to maintain formal registration as such (under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 in the UK for instance).

This is typically the position in Commonwealth jurisdictions such as Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, where only qualified individuals may hold themselves out as being trademark attorneys. In such cases the qualification is known as an exclusive or protected title. The minimum educational requirements to enter the profession in such cases are GCSE A, B or C grade in five approved subjects, and GCE 'A' level in two approved subjects, or their equivalents. Candidates with certain degrees, such as law, may be eligible for exemption in some Foundation Papers of the qualifying examination (and it must be said, will usually find it easier to find a job as a trainee).

There is no exclusive title in other jurisdictions such as the United States, where no specialized examinations are required in order to qualify and practice as a trademark attorney. Instead, any lawyer who is licensed to practice in at least one state may prosecute trademark applications before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Trademark attorneys in the U.S. generally earn between $50,000 AND $60,000 USD, with some earning as much as $120,000 USD annually.

The USPTO provides various trademark application forms on its website that are designed to be completed and submitted electronically. Although many of the forms appear to be relatively straightforward, it is important to be aware that many errors and omissions can not be rectified once the application is submitted, and the filing fee will not be refunded by the USPTO under any circumstances. Furthermore, most individuals will require an attorney’s assistance in responding to subsequent communications issued by the USPTO, and many will simply find it preferable to have an attorney monitor the progress of the application rather than worry about it themselves.

LAWYER

Civil Law

In most common law countries, especially those with fused professions, lawyers have many options over the course of their careers. Besides private practice, they can always aspire to becoming a prosecutor, government counsel, corporate in-house counsel, administrative law judge, judge, arbitrator, law professor, or politician. There are also many non-legal jobs which legal training is good preparation for, such as corporate executive, government administrator, investment banker, entrepreneur, or journalist.^[ In developing countries like India, a large majority of law students never actually practice, but simply use their law degree as a foundation for careers in other fields.

In most civil law countries, lawyers generally structure their legal education around their chosen specialty; the boundaries between different types of lawyers are carefully defined and hard to cross. After one earns a law degree, career mobility may be severely constrained. For example, unlike their American counterparts, it is difficult for German judges to leave the bench and become advocates in private practice. Another interesting example is France, where for much of the 20th century, all magistrates were graduates of an elite professional school for judges. Although the French magistracy has begun experimenting with the Anglo-American model of appointing judges from accomplished advocates, the few advocates who have actually joined the bench this way are looked down upon by their colleagues who have taken the traditional route to magistracy. In a few civil law countries, such as Sweden, the legal profession is not rigorously bifurcated and everyone within it can easily change roles and arenas.

Specialization

In many countries, lawyers are general practitioners who will take almost any kind of case that walks in the door. In others, there has been a tendency since the start of the 20th century for lawyers to specialize early in their careers. In countries where specialization is prevalent, many lawyers specialize in representing one side in one particular area of the law; thus, it is common in the United States to hear of plaintiffs' personal injury attorneys.

Organization

Lawyers in private practice generally work in specialized businesses known as law firms with the exception of English barristers. The vast majority of law firms worldwide are small businesses that range in size from 1 to 10 lawyers. The United States, with its large number of firms with more than 50 lawyers, is an exception. The United Kingdom and Australia are also exceptions, as the UK, Australia and the U.S. are now home to several firms with more than 1,000 lawyers after a wave of mergers in the late 1990s.

Notably, barristers in England and Wales and some states in Australia do not work in "law firms". Those who offer their services to the general public — as opposed to those working "in house" — are required to be self-employed. Most work in groupings known as "sets" or "chambers", where some administrative and marketing costs are shared. An important effect of this different organizational structure is that there is no conflict of interest where barristers in the same chambers work for opposing sides in a case, and in some specialized chambers this is commonplace.

Mandatory Licensing and Membership in Professional Organizations

In some jurisdictions, either the judiciary or the Ministry of Justice directly supervises the admission, licensing, and regulation of lawyers. Other jurisdictions, by statute, tradition, or court order, have granted such powers to a professional association which all lawyers must belong to. In the U.S., such associations are known as mandatory, integrated, or unified bar associations. In the Commonwealth of Nations, similar organizations are known as Inns of Court, bar councils or law societies. In civil law countries, comparable organizations are known as Orders of Advocates, Chambers of Advocates, Colleges of Advocates, Faculties of Advocates, or similar names. Generally, a nonmember caught practicing law may be liable for the crime of unauthorized practice of law.

In common law countries with divided legal professions, barristers traditionally belong to the bar council (or an Inn of Court) and solicitors belong to the law society. In the English-speaking world, the largest mandatory professional association of lawyers is the State Bar of California, with 200,000 members.

Some countries admit and regulate lawyers at the national level, so that a lawyer, once licensed, can argue cases in any court in the land. This is common in small countries like New Zealand, Japan, and Belgium. Others, especially those with federal governments, tend to regulate lawyers at the state or provincial level; this is the case in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Switzerland, to name a few. Brazil is the most well-known federal government that regulates lawyers at the national level.

Some countries, like Italy, regulate lawyers at the regional level, and a few, like Belgium, even regulate them at the local level (that is, they are licensed and regulated by the local equivalent of bar associations but can advocate in courts nationwide). In Germany, lawyers are admitted to regional bars and may appear for clients before all courts nationwide with the exception of the Federal Court of Justice of Germany (Bundesgerichth of or BGH); oddly, securing admission to the BGH's bar limits a lawyer's practice solely to the supreme federal courts and the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany.

Generally, geographic limitations can be troublesome for a lawyer who discovers that his client's cause requires him to litigate in a court beyond the normal geographic scope of his license. Although most courts have special pro hac vice rules for such occasions, the lawyer will still have to deal with a different set of professional responsibility rules, as well as the possibility of other differences in substantive and procedural law.

Some countries grant licenses to non-resident lawyers, who may then appear regularly on behalf of foreign clients. Others require all lawyers to live in the jurisdiction or to even hold national citizenship as a prerequisite for receiving a license to practice. But the trend in industrialized countries since the 1970s has been to abolish citizenship and residency restrictions. For example, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down a citizenship requirement on equality rights grounds in 1989, and similarly, American citizenship and residency requirements were struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 and 1985, respectively. The European Court of Justice made similar decisions in 1974 and 1977 striking down citizenship restrictions in Belgium and France.

Who Regulates Lawyers

A key difference among countries is whether lawyers should be regulated solely by an independent judiciary and its subordinate institutions (a self-regulating legal profession), or whether lawyers should be subject to supervision by the Ministry of Justice in the executive branch.

In most civil law countries, the government has traditionally exercised tight control over the legal profession in order to ensure a steady supply of loyal judges and bureaucrats. That is, lawyers were expected first and foremost to serve the state, and the availability of counsel for private litigants was an afterthought. Even in civil law countries like Norway which have partially self-regulating professions, the Ministry of Justice is the sole issuer of licenses, and makes its own independent re-evaluation of a lawyer's fitness to practice after a lawyer has been expelled from the Advocates' Association. Brazil is an unusual exception in that its national Order of Advocates has become a fully self-regulating institution (with direct control over licensing) and has successfully resisted government attempts to place it under the control of the Ministry of Labor.Of all the civil law countries, Communist countries historically went the farthest towards total state control, with all Communist lawyers forced to practice in collectives by the mid-1950s.

In contrast, common law lawyers have traditionally regulated themselves through institutions where the influence of non-lawyers, if any, was weak and indirect (despite nominal state control). Such institutions have been traditionally dominated by private practitioners who opposed strong state control of the profession on the grounds that it would endanger the ability of lawyers to zealously and competently advocate their clients' causes in the adversarial system of justice.

However, the concept of the self-regulating profession has been criticized as a sham which serves to legitimize the professional monopoly while protecting the profession from public scrutiny. Disciplinary mechanisms have been astonishingly ineffective, and penalties have been light or nonexistent.

Voluntary Associations of Lawyers

Lawyers are always free to form voluntary associations of their own, apart from any licensing or mandatory membership that may be required by the laws of their jurisdiction. Like their mandatory counterparts, such organizations may exist at all geographic levels. In American English, such associations are known as voluntary bar associations. The largest voluntary professional association of lawyers in the English-speaking world is the American Bar Association. In some countries, like France and Italy, lawyers have also formed trade unions.

Criticism of Lawyers

Hostility towards the legal profession is a widespread phenomenon. The legal profession was abolished in Prussia in 1780 and in France in 1789, though both countries eventually realized that their judicial systems could not function efficiently without lawyers. Complaints about too many lawyers were common in both England and the United States in the 1840 Germany in the 1910 and in Australia, Canada, the United States, and Scotland in the 1980

Public distrust of lawyers reached record heights in the United States after the Watergate scandal. In the aftermath of Watergate, legal self-help books became popular among those who wished to solve their legal problems without having to deal with lawyers. Lawyer jokes (already a perennial favorite) also soared in popularity in English-speaking North America as a result of Watergate. In 1989, American legal self-help publisher Nolo Press published a 171-page compilation of negative anecdotes about lawyers from throughout human history.

A 2004 comparative study examined the various legal professions around the world and noted a "remarkable consistency" in complaints about lawyers that transcends both time and locale. The authors then generalized the most common complaints about lawyers as follows:

• abuse of litigation in various ways, including using dilatory tactics and false evidence and making frivolous arguments to the courts;
• preparation of false documentation, such as false deeds, contracts, or wills;
• deceiving clients and other persons and misappropriating property;
• procrastination in dealings with clients; and charging excessive fees.

Compensation

Lawyers are paid for their work in a variety of ways. In private practice, they may work for an hourly fee according to a billable hour structure, a contingency fee (usually in cases involving personal injury), or a lump sum payment if the matter is straightforward. Normally, most lawyers negotiate a written fee agreement up front and may require a non-refundable retainer in advance. In many countries there are fee-shifting arrangements by which the loser must pay the winner's fees and costs; the United States is the major exception, although in turn, its legislators have carved out many exceptions to the so-called "American Rule" of no fee shifting.

Lawyers working directly on the payroll of governments, nonprofits, and corporations usually earn a regular annual salary. In many countries, with the notable exception of Germany, lawyers can also volunteer their labor in the service of worthy causes through an arrangement called pro bono (for the common good).Traditionally such work was performed on behalf of the poor, but in some countries it has now expanded to many other causes like the natural environment.

In some countries, there are legal aid lawyers who specialize in providing legal services to the indigent. France and Spain even have formal fee structures by which lawyers are compensated by the government for legal aid cases on a per-case basis. A similar system, though not as extensive or generous, operates in Australia, Canada, as well as South Africa.

In other countries, legal aid specialists are practically nonexistent. This may be because non-lawyers are allowed to provide such services; in both Italy and Belgium, trade unions and political parties provide what can be characterized as legal aid services. Some legal aid in Belgium is also provided by young lawyer apprentices subsidized by local bar associations (known as the pro deo system), as well as consumer protection nonprofit organizations and Public Assistance Agencies subsidized by local governments. In Germany, mandatory fee structures have enabled widespread implementation of affordable legal expense insurance