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:
“You survived because you were the first.
You survived because you were the last.
Because alone. Because the others.
Because on the left. Because on the right.
Because it was raining. Because it was sunny.
Because a shadow fell.”
—Wislawa Szymborska (b. 1923)
“If the guardian or the mother
Tell the woes of willful waste,
Scorn their counsel and their pother,
You can hang or drown at last.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)