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The American Legal Profession

Technically there is no such thing as an “American lawyer”: every state admits its own, and a lawyer licensed to practice in Florida is strictly speaking a layperson as far as Alabama or Alaska is concerned. Nonetheless, in the aggregate, this is a vast army of law trained men and women.

The profession is, and always has been, quite diverse. There are many legal worlds. To begin with, there is the world of the big firm. These big firms recruit their lawyers, by and large, from the “national” law schools – with big reputations and long traditions, like Harvard and Yale. We know in general what the work is: it includes securities law, antitrust law, bond issues, mergers, tax work, and international trade. In both big and little firms, up to half the work could be described as “litigation”.

Another staple of law practice is real estate: buying and selling houses or concluding elaborate deals for shopping centers, suburban developments, and office buildings, or converting luxury apartments into condominiums. Estate work is also common to big firms and little firms alike. Big firms handle these affairs for captains of industry and for great old families. Middle-sized ones do the same for the medium-rich manufacturers of plastic novelties, owners of restaurants, carwash companies, apartment buildings. Small town lawyers and solo practitioners handle farm estates. And so on.

Some branches of practice do tend toward specialization. There are lawyers who work on port trade, on chartering ships, on show business (“entertainment law”), on trademarks and copyrights. However, few lawyers are totally specialized.

Big-firm lawyers cover many fields and many problems. But there are areas they definitely do not touch. One is divorce. It is the lawyers in smallish firms and in law clinics, and the solos, who handle “one-shot” clients – couples who want a divorce, victims of car crashes, people arrested for drunk driving. Some lawyers with one-shot clients struggle to make ends meet; others earn heaps of money.

Since the early nineteenth century, law has been a prominent way “to get ahead” in the society. For much of American history, a lawyer meant “white male.” Black lawyers were rare birds in American history. Not a single woman was admitted to the bar before the 1870s. Indeed, when women tried to break into this all-male club, they met resistance and reluctance, to say the least. Opinions changed, but slowly and grudgingly. Equality of opportunity is not an easy goal to achieve, especially with regard to barriers of class. The cost of legal education is one of these barriers. Lawyers tend to come from the families of businessmen, teachers, professionals; they are not sons of grocery clerks or coal miners’ daughters. Over 73 percent of the practicing lawyers in Chicago came from “solidly middle-class or upper-middle-class-homes,” far more than if lawyers were selected from Chicago families at random. Many came from lawyerly or professional backgrounds not from working-class backgrounds.

There are law schools in every major city and in almost every state; Alaska is one of the few that lacks this modern amenity. These law schools are both different from each other and much the same. They are remarkably similar in curriculum and method. They also tend to impose the same general requirements: a college degree, and the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). But law schools are quite different in prestige, money and power – and in quality of faculty and students. The stronger older schools are able to “skim off the cream”. Harvard, Yale, Berkley, and Chicago can afford huge research libraries; small schools cannot.

Lawyers, like Americans in general, are joiners. They are united into a strong, permanent organization – the American Bar Association, the ABA, in short. There are also state, county, and city bar associations. But the ABA is still not an association of all American lawyers. No one has to join it though it has a huge membership.

Law and lawyers are expensive. Many people who want or need a lawyer have trouble paying the price. But the state provides a lawyer, free of charge “public defenders”, to anyone accused of a serious crime who cannot afford to pay on his own. For civil cases, the situation is more complicated. A few lawyers have always made it a practice to do some work free for poor clients. There are now a number of law firms organized for the “public interest”.

Task 2. Mark the statements which are true.

1. An “American lawyer” is licensed to practice in any state of the FALSE
2. The number of people working in legal field is TRUE
3. Big law firms prefer to employ specialists from the well-known law schools. TRUE
4. Most big firms do not deal with FALSE
5. Lawyers’ work includes antitrust law, international trade, tax work, bond issues, TRUE
6. Real estate practice is the work which doesn’t interest big FALSE
7. The social position of a client defines the firm which will handle the af TRUE
8. Nobody wants to deal with farm FALSE
9. Specialization among lawyers is not very FALSE
10. Practically there are no fields which big-firm lawyers do not touch FALSE
11. The profession of a lawyer has always been a prestigious one and only for the FALSE
12. Not all lawyers are members of the American Bar TRUE

Task 3. Complete the following sentences.

Big firms handle estate work for captains of industry and for great old families.

Middle-sized firms do the work for the medium-rich manufacturers of plastic novelties, owners of restaurants, carwash companies, apartment buildings.

Some lawyers specialize in law.

Small-firm lawyers and solos deal with “one-shot” clients.

For many years of American history a lawyer meant white male.

Women were not admitted to the bar before the 1870s.

Equality of opportunity is not an easy goal to achieve, especially with regard to barriers of class.

Lawyers tend to come from the families of businessmen, teachers, professionals; they are not sons of grocery clerks or coal miners’ daughters.

Law schools are similar in in curriculum and method.

But law schools are quite different in prestige, money and power – and in quality of faculty and students.

American lawyers are united into strong, permanent organization – the American Bar Association, the ABA, in short.

The state provides a lawyer, free of charge “public defenders”, to anyone accused of a serious crime who cannot afford to pay on his own.

Task 4. Produce the whole sentence in English.

1. Legal profession in England is divided into two branches: barristers and solicitors.
2. Barristers and solicitors have their own characteristic functions and separate control apparatus.
3. The solicitor is general lawyer.
4. Solicitors deal with all the day-to-day work of preparation of legal documents for buying and selling houses, will writing.
5. Solicitors work on court cases of divorce, marital issues, debt collection, minor crimes.
6. In a civil action the solicitor has the right appear in lower courts.
7. Most barristers are professional lawyers but it is a mistake to think that a barrister is a lawyer.
8. A student must pass a group of examinations to get a law degree and then to proceed to a vocational course.
9. Federal magistrate judges are appointed by the court.
10. Barristers advise really difficult legal matters.
11. Royal Counselor status is awarded about 30 counsellors a year by the Queen.
12. The judge is presiding officer.
13. The traditional function of judges is to apply existing law to the case before them.
14. All the evidence having been presented, the judge summarizes the case for the jury.
15. Closely related to judicial independence is the doctrine of judicial immunity.
16. Federal magistrate judges hold office for eight years.
17. The magistrate judge is authorized to decide the case and to make a final judgment in the name of the district court.
18. When you are your own boss you can refuse cases or clients when you disagree morally with the legal principles expensed by the clients.
19. Federal magistrate judges perform two kinds of functions.
20. During the apprenticeship students are taught how preliminary investigations are underway, documents are drawn up, preparations are underway for the hearing of a case.

Task 5. Read the text below and think of the word which best fits each space.

Even lawyers with the same (1) qualifications  and professional title may (2) be doing very different kinds of work. Most towns in the United States, for example,  have small (3)  firms of attorneys who are in daily contact (4) with ordinary people, giving advice and acting  (5)   on matters  such as  consumer affairs, traffic accident disputes and contracts for the (6) sale of land. Some may also prepare defences for clients (7) accused of crimes. However, in (8) both the United States and other industrialized countries, lawyers are becoming more and (9) more specialized. Working in small firms lawyers now tend (10) to restrict themselves to certain kinds of work, and lawyers (11) working in large law firms or companies (12) in the law department of a large commercial enterprise work on highly specific areas (13) of law. One lawyer may be employed (14) by a mining company just to prepare (15) contracts for the supply of coal. Another may work (16) for a newspaper advising the editors on libel matters. Another may (17) be part of a Wall Street firm of over a hundred (18) lawyers who specialize (19) advising stockbrokers (20) share transactions.