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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—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“The attorneys defending a criminal are rarely artists enough to turn the beautiful ghastliness of his deed to his advantage.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity—an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“[Urging the national government] to eradicate local prejudices and mistaken rivalships to consolidate the affairs of the states into one harmonious interest.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)