Attorneys In The United States
An attorney at law (or attorney-at-law) in the United States is a practitioner in a court of law who is legally qualified to prosecute and defend actions in such court on the retainer of clients. Alternative terms include counselor (or counsellor-at-law) and lawyer. As of April 2011, there were 1,225,452 licensed attorneys in the United States.
The United States legal system does not draw a distinction between lawyers who plead in court and those who do not, unlike many other common law jurisdictions (such as England and Wales, which distinguishes between solicitors and barrister, or, in Scotland, advocates), and civil law jurisdictions (such as Italy and France, which distinguish between advocates and civil law notaries). An additional factor which differentiates the American legal system from other countries is that there is no delegation of routine work to notaries public.
Attorneys may use the post-nominal letters Esq., the abbreviated form of the word Esquire.
Read more about Attorneys In The United States: Practice of Law, Media Images, Specialization, Control of Cases, Unlicensed Practice of Law, Attire, Alternatives To The Practice of Law
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—James Madison (1751–1836)