What is the difference between a lawyer and an attorney?

mementoflash

They are the same thing. Lawyers, also called attorneys, act as both advocates and advisors in our society. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos053.htm Feb 08 06, 3:08 PM

Baloo55th

In England we call them solicitors and barristers. When we're being polite, that is. But we do have an Attorney-General who is a Government political type person. Lawyer applies to all the attorneys, solicitors and barristers in both USA and England, but you wouldn't call a solicitor or barrister an attorney. Feb 08 06, 5:17 PM

lanfranco

I was curious about this, so I looked it up on the online OED (a very nice Christmas present from my husband, the Maven). "Attorney" seems to have a Middle English origin, dating to the 13th-14th centuries, and it looks to me as though it might have been derived from French. It meant "agent," or "appointed representative". Later, it actually WAS used in England to mean "lawyer," in the sense of a legally-qualified solicitor practicing in the courts of Common Law. Samuel Johnson used it in the 18th-century, but it was abolished in the 19th century. In the U.S., for a variety of reasons, the distinction between attorney and counsel (that is, between solicitor and barrister) never existed, for a variety of reasons. (Comparatively few legally-apprenticed and/or university-educated people for a long while would probably have been one of them.) It's true that in this country, we use "lawyer and "attorney" interchangeably. Feb 08 06, 5:38 PM

misspistachio

Today they all mean the same thing. But, historically, they have different meanings. An attorney used to be one who practiced civil law- contracts, torts, and property. And a lawyer used to refer to one who practiced public law- Criminal and Constitutional; a counselor refers to one of the many roles lawyers/attorneys serve. They are not there only to advocate for their clients in a trial; they are also there to give advice and counsel their clients. Dec 12 06, 4:01 PM