Talk:Attorneys in the United States

Officially it's "attorney-at-law" with hyphens
...or so says Black's Law Dictionary. Anyone have a substantial reference that says otherwise? If nobody comes up with one for a few weeks, this entry should probably be moved to "Attorney-at-law". There is already a page of that title now, which had a redirect to "lawyer" instead of here - which is an even worse imprecision - I changed that one to redirect here in the meantime. - Reaverdrop 01:42, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I concur that the correct usage is with hyphens. I am also appalled at how bad the text of this article has become since someone split it off the Lawyer article (as anyone can see from the history of the Lawyer article, I originally drafted much of this text for that article). Now that I have thoroughly researched and rewritten Lawyer, I may have to fix this one next!
 * Here is what I am planning to do in a few weeks: (1) Change unlicensed practice of law to unauthorized practice of law, which is the dominant usage among professional responsibility experts; (2) Move all the U.S.-related stuff to Lawyers in the United States; (3) Move all the Indian-related stuff to Lawyers in India; and (4) rewrite this article as a very general and brief article about attorneys at law in general and how that usage died out in the U.K. and many Commonwealth nations (because the position of solicitor was seen as more prestigious) but became the dominant usage in the United States and several other nations where the legal profession fused early on. Anyone have any objections? --Coolcaesar 01:01, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Deleted material regarding Juris Doctor
I have deleted language asserting that the Juris Doctor degree does not confer the title of "doctor." The article on Juris Doctor has been infected with this kind of material for some time. Let's leave it out of the article on Attorney at Law.

I'm going to make an assertion here: There is no such thing as a doctoral degree that does not confer the title of doctor. To state otherwise is in my opinion nonsensical. The edit wars on these kinds of things in the Juris Doctor or related articles detracts from the reliability and reputation of Wikipedia in my view. Let's keep this encyclopedic.

And let's keep edit wars about whether a particular doctoral degree "really" is or is not a doctoral degree out of the article on Attorney at Law. Please leave that battle -- if (sigh....) it has to be fought -- in some other place than in this article. Yours, Famspear 20:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

This is really just hatred against lawyers in the common law countries. In most civil law countries, it is commonly accepted that a lawyer is a "Doktor". In the US, it's the non-lawyer PhDs who resent the idea that U.S. lawyers, with their three years of grad school, have the same academic gravitas. I would bot object to including this in the entry. Excluding it seems to me to be an exercise is capitulation. Novaseeker 02:50, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

External link to a directory of lawyers
I removed the link to lawyers.com. There are many online directories of attorneys using search engine optimization to battle for the top spot. I don't think linking to one of them helps this article at all. -- DS1953 talk 21:01, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

How to Find a Lawyer and How to find an Attorney There should be Wikipedia articles on each of these two topics with suggestions to contact the local bar association as well as the professional bar association which covers the type of problem (for example the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the American Bankruptcy Institute, etc). The Wikipedia articles should link to this Attorney-at-Law article and to the Lawyer article as well as to Wikipedia articles on Bankruptcy, Immigration, etc. Some consumers will need this sort of help. I would try to set these up myself but am too new here to do this. ````
 * No, that would be against a ton of Wikipedia policies. Wikipedia is purely descriptive ("this is how something is") not prescriptive ("this is what you should do").  See What Wikipedia is not, Verifiability, and Neutral point of view. Wikibooks is where "how-to" stuff goes.  --Coolcaesar 02:48, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Statistics on specialization and certification of specialties
I added some information on certification of specialists, using Texas as the example. One thing I am not sure of is: Of the 8,303 board certified specialists in Texas, are any considered inactive members of the Texas Bar (i.e., are any part of the 11,000 inactive members, and not part of the approximately 77,000 active members)?

Also, for what it's worth, many thousands of the 77,000 active Texas Bar members are not currently engaged in the practice of law (i.e., they retain the active Texas Bar membership even though they're working in a field unrelated to law practice). Yours, Famspear 23:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I am cleaning up this pigpen today
This article has been getting worse and worse over the past two years since it was split off from a section I originally drafted in Lawyer (trace the history back to 2004 if you don't believe me). I am at the library this afternoon with a pile of excellent books on the American legal profession, so I'm going to start fixing it. With citations. --Coolcaesar 23:48, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I am going to do a bit of fixing and cleaning myself, if you don't mind. I'm working on the WP:AR1 Legal articles project (se the Talk page under that rubric). Bearian 23:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Feel free to clean it up. I've been much too busy with depositions to finish cleaning up this mess. --Coolcaesar 18:53, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality
The phrase "Attorneys in private practice and small firms (who can't afford to litigate every little issue) v. big firms (who can)" is clearly POV in its wording. Tmrobertson 06:57, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * That's not POV; that's a cold economic fact. I will add a cite to one of the more pungent passages from Cameron Stracher's book Double Billing when I have the time.   --Coolcaesar 22:13, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

It is not the fact at all. Have you ever practiced law? You're basing this on some book? Furthermore, the bit about plaintiff's attorneys being only contingent is wrong. Who came up with this stuff????--Davidwiz 20:23, 24 April 2007 (UTC)


 * You're implying that a statement based one's own practice of law would be better than something from a book. Wikipedia rules are just the opposite: an encyclopedia is not supposed to have first person research or expertise, but rather to bring together information from other authorities.  To the extent that you think the information in this particular source is not settled fact, you should add a citation to an opposing source and document it as a controversy.

Saying that smaller firms (or solo practioners) don't litigate every issue is nonsense. Every lawyer has an obligation to litigate fully for their client. The statement that only big firms litigate all the small issues actually would mean they are commiting ethical violations for bringing frivolous actions (motions, etc.) if it is used in that sense. I am a small firm lawyer but really, I don't think DBA Piper ... and the other giant firms want to be known for lacking legal professionalism. That really should be changed. I am not going to bother citing all of the US state and federal ethics rules for lawyers, I think this is just a fact that can be accepted, but by all means please look up any State or Federal Bar rules on ethics, or the ABA Model Rules. Frivolity to prejudice another party is unethical, and every attorney has a duty to litigate competently for their client.

Please, please, please!! refrain to use the word "America" or "American" to make reference to the U.S.A. !!!, The U.S.A. is a country, but AMERICA is a continent that goes from Chile to Alaska...... the use of "America" for U.S. is only ignorance. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 137.52.242.224 (talk • contribs). (on 3 April 2007, USA central daylight time)


 * Dear anonymous user at IP 137.52.242.224: The word "American," like many words in many languages, has more than one correct meaning.


 * American [ . . . ] adj. 1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of the United States of America, its people, culture, government, or history. American Heritage Dictionary, p. 102 (2d Coll. Ed. 1985);


 * American adj [ . . . ] 2. of or relating to the U.S. or its possessions or original territory. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, p. 37 (8th ed. 1976);


 * American [ . . . ] adj. 1. of, in, or characteristic of the U.S., its people, etc. Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, p. 44 (2d Coll. Ed. 1970).


 * The word "American" is properly used world wide in business, in law, in commerce, in science, in religion, in education, in virtually every aspect of human communication, to refer to the United States of America, and things and concepts related to the United States of America, and nothing that you or I say or write in Wikipedia or anywhere else will ever change this. This is a discussion page for the article Attorney at Law. Let's stay on topic. Yours, Famspear 02:33, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


 * PS: For an article covering the controversy about the use of the word "American," see the article entitled (what else?) Use of the word American. Yours, Famspear 03:06, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't need to look in a dictionary...If you would travel, you would know. America is the USA. The Americas are the western hemisphere. When you are in Mexico and say America, they know/think/agree that you mean USA. Finally, America is a place that is made up of many "United States". It's common usage, regardless of any debates, if you just travel a bit.Jjdon (talk) 00:03, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I will be revising this article over the course of 2007
Now that I have got the Lawyer article mostly stabilized (with a few more minor issues to wrap up), I am thinking about cleaning up this article next.

Here are a few of my proposed changes:


 * Move to Attorney-at-law, the more common term
 * Research and footnote as many assertions as possible and delete all controversial assertions for which reliable, published sources are not readily available
 * Move a lot of detail to Legal education in the United States
 * Move a lot of detail to Juris Doctor
 * Restructure the section on the job of an attorney to more accurately reflect the differences in workflow between litigators and transactional lawyers, and between junior associates versus senior associates, of counsel, and partners

Any one have a problem with these proposals? This will take me a few months. --Coolcaesar 07:20, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * These all sound like good ideas to me. I've been cleaning up a bit of the text drafting over the past day or so  -- I think it needs a lot of work.  I mean, frankly, something that is being drafted by lawyers should read like pristine text, and this isn't really there yet. Novaseeker 14:07, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

jdfg
at the begining cant it just simply say what an attorney basically is, i didnt know what one was and I went here but it didnt help. Can't it just say that if your too sick to make a decision then they do or what ever it is
 * It's a bit too complicated for that. The intro already summarizes an incredibly complex topic quite well (although some of the later paragraphs still need work). --Coolcaesar 17:30, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Economic Position Of Attorneys Section Ignores Economics
This section is trying to say something about supply and demand, but seems to ignore the economic definition of supply and of demand as well as the Law of Supply And Demand. Since one of the statements is attributed to an ABA study, I assume there really is something to say here, but as it stands, it is gibberish, so I hope someone familiar with the facts can fix it.

The ABA said one third of demand wasn't met? Unless there are price caps I don't know about, the supply will always meet the demand. Maybe the ABA used some arbitrary criteria for of who deserves legal services and a third of those deserving couldn't afford it? Just guessing.

It also suggests that the fast-growing supply of lawyers to do high-priced legal services has caused a surplus of lawyers. Supply growing faster than demand cannot cause that all by itself; the market always clears in the long run. If there are large numbers of lawyers looking for work, it can only be due to the price not having adjusted itself yet -- i.e. those lawyers are erroneously still asking old-supply prices or the employers are erroneously assuming they have to pay old-supply prices. That's a temporary thing and the article should make that clear if that is in fact the situation.

Bryan Henderson 03:47, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Media Image section: not very encyclopedic
I don't like the Media Image section at all. I'd just delete most of it, but maybe it's just me, so I'll just describe my feelings toward it to add to those of others who may come later:

The section reads like cheerleading for the legal profession, and a defense to an imagined insult. Every line of it gives reasons to appreciate lawyers; nothing remotely critical of lawyers appears.

I don't agree that the media, in general, portrays lawyers as the section claims. Certainly some TV shows and movies do. Any generalization about how the media as a whole portrays lawyers cannot be factual enough to put here. If there were a citation to a respected authority, I might accept such a generalization.

People work hard in all professions, and entertainment shows misrepresent lots of them. People know that. There is nothing noteworthy in how hard an attorney's job is to justify space here.

Something that would be useful is simply an objective breakdown of what the job entails (and there is another section already for that). But not as a rebuttal to a nonspecific argument from somewhere in the media that the job is something else.

Bryan Henderson 04:05, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

”Trial attorneys (who argue the facts, such as Johnnie Cochran) v. appellate attorneys (who argue the law, such as David Boies)”  Trial attys don't argue the law? wtf? They argue both. Facts are meaningless without THE LAW. Whoever wrote this is a moron-- not a lawyer.

This distinction between trial lawyers and appellate attorneys is not entirely inaccurate. While a trial attorney does apply the law to the facts of the case, appeals usually deal with purely legal questions. Appellate courts grant great deference to the trial court's fact-finding. Other than in extreme cases of abuses of judicial discretion or mistake, a lawyer is usually only able to argue the law (not the facts) on appeal.

I have finally started my long-planned rewrite project
After thinking about this for over a year, I have started my long-planned rewrite of this article. Like my successful rewrite of Lawyer, I am working on an extremely dramatic revision (preserving as much useful text as possible) on a temporary subarticle of my talk page. Then next I will dig up lots of sources so that practically ever assertion will be backed up by a reliable source. Then I will do a couple more revisions for style and then overwrite the entire article with my new version. Unfortunately, because I am also busy with dozens of other priorities (like taking depositions), my revision will probably take at least six months to complete. But this is to give everyone a heads-up so they know what's going on when the entire article gets replaced down the road. --Coolcaesar 17:29, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * A year later and the draft is only half done. Wow am I busy.  But perhaps I will finally finish it this year.  --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:45, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Still working on it (sort of). Wow I am busy! --Coolcaesar (talk) 03:17, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Merge
Shouldn't this be merged with Lawyer? Zoticogrillo (talk) 23:21, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I am opposing your merge proposal for the reasons stated in full at Talk:Lawyer. --Coolcaesar (talk) 07:18, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

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Associates
Are associates regarded as attorneys in the USA? I would assume they are, since they have completed the bar exam, and the title only refers to their position in the firm. I ran into this problem during translation, since around here "associate" refers to people who have completed law school and are working at a firm, but have not completed a bar exam. It's not required for everything around here. Also, is "counsel" an equivalent or lower/higher position than "associate" in the USA? Around here, again, it's higher, since it refers to people who have done the exam. In the USA, however, it seems to refer to people who can't or don't want to become partners. That would imply that in at least some cases they are regarded as lower than associates, who are potential future partners. 2001:14BA:2BEA:C600:ACE0:6127:8CE6:8DCC (talk) 08:14, 7 September 2018 (UTC)