Shadow counsel or a Shadow lawyer is a term used in law to mean an appointed, duplicate, lawyer as an auxiliary or alternate, should the original lawyer (or legal team) fail in some way.
Shadow Counsel is a term used by conspiracy theorists to mean the secret police or any sort of hidden persons with power.
Shadow counsel is a legal term referring to a second lawyer that is appointed in secrecy to protect a witness from the other defendants who may be sharing the same lawyer (and thus, the known appointed lawyer is biased). Such a situation could be a drug conspiracy or people forced into being accomplices by a mob leader. Shadow counsel advises in the best interests of the witness.
A fictional, yet informative example would be the Law and Order: SVU episode, "Ace."
Famous quotes containing the words shadow and/or counsel:
“The gods worship a line-drawing
Of a woman, in the shadow of the sea
Which goes on writing.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Two may keep counsel when the third’s away.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)