h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm studying law in the US, and I have a question about the practice of law in the UK. As I understand it, lawyers in the UK are divided into barrister who litigate and solicitors who don't. Can anyone tell me why there's a difference?

Good to see you after all these years 2Bit.


As I understand it the key is in the BAR part
of barrister. They are lawyers who are licensed
to appear in court. The active element. They
have been called to the Bar - traditionally a
railing separating the judge on the bench from
the lawyers, criminals and public.

The solicitors are confined to meeting clients,
taking down an account of the case, gathering
evidence and witnesses, researching law books
for pertinent precedents, giving some advice and
then recommending a good barrister (or barristers)
as the situation demands.

In most North American law offices they have many
lawyers who never actually appear in court but I
don't think there is a name to make the distinction
except perhaps the description 'trial lawyer'.

Hopefully someone with better knowledge will help.


~jwf~

I'm not quite sure what the difference is, but I know it isn't that. I work for a law firm with solicitors but no barristers, and they do attend court. I think the representation of a barrister may be required in some way, but solicitors certainly speak in court. I also know there are things a solicitor does that a barrister doesn't, as one of our lawyers chose to make the unusual step in that direction a year or more ago.

Thanks Bob,
Perhaps you'll ask around at work tomorrow
and be able to tell us more about it. I do hope
revealing an unusual interest in your work
won't overly distress your co-workers.


~jwf~

In America, if you're licensed to practice law, your license allows you to do anything required of an attorney even though transactional lawyers never litigate. The only thing that may be limited is patent law. There is a separate patent bar. You don't have to be a law school grad to take it. One of my classmates did it over the last year.

Ahh the UK legal system - an anachronistic if ever there was.

Squiggles has it about right, except solicitors do represent clients in court for most normal cases, civil & criminal. Usually, only when a case goes to a higher/superior court (Crown Court occasionally or High Court and above) is a barrister engaged by the solicitor on behalf of the client - historically, a barrister was not allowed to be employed directly by a client. Normally this is in cases of appeal from a lower court, a high profile case, one where lots of money is involved or one where there is an unusual or debatable point of law to be contested. A barrister is expected to be able to take the information from a solicitor, research it and become an expert on obscure points of law and be able to present that at court.

TBH, to answer your question fully for the UK, you would need to research English, Welsh & NI law courts for the differences between lower & superior courts and which cases they handle, then take a sideways and language shift to look at Scottish legal systems which are even more medieval and see who represents who at each level.

In general, if you are nicked, get a solicitor - unless you robbed/killed someone really rich or famous or stole some state secrets in which case your solicitor may need to get you a barrister to plead 'not guilty, guv!'

Recent changes in laws about what each can do is narrowing the gap so I reckon that in about 15 years or so, they'll both just be 'lawyers'.

The US system of laws is just as blizzard, but we lack the long history to create legal absurdities, so we have to borrow from some trouble from English law. One of the last cases we had involved a Federal District Court in Pennsylvania that was faces with applying Scottish law for one defendant in a case and California law in another.

Our loving professor used that case as a the basis for part of our final exam.

Blizzard = bizarre

Sorry, I'm typing this on my phone.

Blizzard worked for me. Like a cold woolly blanket
being pulled over the eyes, blurring outlines and
burying the landscape.

~jwf~

To note as well that in a civil law system there is still a separation of the legal profession, but differently.

So you have notaire, which does the solicitors job for family law, conveyancing, wills and marriage. And then you have avocat which does all forms of litigation, including the very low brow cases such as suing your neighbour and drunk and disorderly and the like.

There used to be more divisions in both common and civil law - Commissioner for Oaths, Notary Public on the one, and things like Avoué on the other.

sprout

Interesting. I new notaries had more significance in civil law systems, but I wasn't.clear on. What it was. I follow the sovereign citizen movement here. They have some curious notins about what our notaries can do. We still use them to witness signatures and oaths but they try to test them like a judicial officer.

I know someone who is a real estate lawyer. I rather doubt that she appears in court very often.

I don't think anyone has mentioned Attorneys as yet.
There used to be TV shows featuring courageous attorneys.
One show was called "(insert name) Attorney At Law".

It always had a court room scene where the attorney did
wonderful things like testing a witness's sense of smell
and discrediting their testimony by offering them aromas
such as gasoline which disabled their ability to recognise
whatever substance was central to their evidence.

Searching IMDb all I can find is:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0294097/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
which I'd never heard of before.

I'm sure there was another one years ago.
It mighta been Perry Mason or Matlock.
I was never a big fan; too formulaic and wordy.

~jwf~

How about "Remington Steel" and "L.A.Law?"

>I know someone who is a real estate lawyer. I rather doubt that she appears in court very often.

In America, we call lawyers who make deals transactional lawyers and lawyers the ones that try go to court are trial lawyers. However, there's no legal difference between them. If a real estate lawyer wants to take a DUI case, they can walk into court and represent someone.

That doesn't mean you'll do all that well. In my law school, you can graduate with one crim law class and one crim pro class. It would probably he malpractice for someone to try and represent a criminal defendant without more than that. I was sort of disappointed that we didn't get into anything any deeper than we did in Criminal Procedure. It was about the same as a 40-hourCrim Pro class at the academy. But I digress.

I met an Australian who is now a Barrisiter in England and Scotland in the pub last night, and asked your question on her behalf.

She said that the closest thing is that Barristers are 'trial lawyers', but there are some differences because Solictors can be appear as solicitor advocates in the lower courts, (magistrates and Sheriff) but rarely in higher courts, and never in the High Court.

Here's a link which is semi-helpful http://www.takelegaladvice.com/news-and-information/legal-guidance/-/Do-I-need-a-solicitor-or-a-barrister/

Interesting. I was under the impression that what we call law school was an undergraduate program in England. In America, to attend an American Bar Association accredited school you have to have your undergraduate degree, then you law school is three years.

Personally, I think it should be an undergraduate program. Sort of like an engineerig degree where there's more focus on the area of your major and fewer elective outside of legal education.

Over here you can do an undergraduate law degree, or you can to a shorter post graduate 'law conversion course', or Legal Practice Course.
These links from a London Law School explain it pretty well.

http://www.city.ac.uk/law/careers/become-a-lawyer/becoming-a-solicitor

http://www.city.ac.uk/law/careers/become-a-lawyer/becoming-a-barrister

I think that to an American any of the professions in the UK seem bizarre, and they certainly don't all make sense in a lot of ways. They've mainly grown from medievel roots without any sense of design.

For instance Surgeons are referred to as 'Mr' not 'Dr' because the Royal College of Surgeons oringinated from the Guild of Barber Surgeons, which was established around 1368. It makes no sense, but why change something that does no harm?

>> the closest thing is that Barristers are 'trial lawyers' <<

While I must stop short of saying I told ya so,
it is quite gratifying now to see that my Post 2
was almost correct and that my many hours of
watching 'Rumple of the Bailey' were not wasted.

~jwf~