Referat: English For Students in Law
Referat: English For Students in Law
REFERAT
ENGLISH FOR STUDENTS IN LAW
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LAWYER
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majority of law students never actually practice, but simply use their law degree
as a foundation for careers in other fields.
In most civil law countries, lawyers generally structure their legal education
around their chosen specialty; the boundaries between different types of lawyers
are carefully defined and hard to cross. After one earns a law degree, career
mobility may be severely constrained. For example, unlike their American
counterparts. Another interesting example is France, where for much of the 20th
century, all judiciary officials were graduates of an elite professional school for
judges. Although the French judiciary has begun experimenting with the Anglo-
American model of appointing judges from accomplished advocates, the few
advocates who have actually joined the bench this way are looked down upon by
their colleagues who have taken the traditional route to judicial office.
In a few civil law countries, such as Sweden, the legal profession is not rigorously
bifurcated and everyone within it can easily change roles and arenas.
In many countries, lawyers are general practitioners who represent clients
in a broad field of legal matters. In others, there has been a tendency since the
start of the 20th century for lawyers to specialize early in their careers.
In countries where specialization is prevalent, many lawyers specialize in
representing one side in one particular area of the law; thus, it is common in
the United States to hear of plaintiffs' personal injury attorneys. Texas offers
attorneys the opportunity to receive a board certification through the
state's Texas Board of Legal Specialization. To be board certified, attorney
applicants undergo a rigorous examination in one of 24 areas of practice offered
by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Only those attorneys who are "board
certified" are permitted to use the word "specialize" in any publicly accessible
materials such as a website or television commercial. See Texas Rule 7.02(a)(6).
Organizations
Lawyers in private practice generally work in specialized businesses known
as law firms, with the exception of English barristers. The vast majority of law
firms worldwide are small businesses that range in size from 1 to 10 lawyers. The
United States, with its large number of firms with more than 50 lawyers, is an
exception. The United Kingdom and Australia are also exceptions, as the UK,
Australia and the U.S. are now home to several firms with more than 1,000
lawyers after a wave of mergers in the late 1990s.
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Notably, barristers in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and some states in
Australia do not work in "law firms". Those who offer their services to members of
the general public—as opposed to those working "in-house" — are required to be
self-employed. Most work in groupings known as "sets" or "chambers", where
some administrative and marketing costs are shared. An important effect of this
different organizational structure is that there is no conflict of interest where
barristers in the same chambers work for opposing sides in a case, and in some
specialized chambers this is commonplace.
Responsibilities
In most countries, particularly civil law countries, there has been a tradition
of giving many legal tasks to a variety of civil law notaries, clerks, and scriveners.
These countries do not have "lawyers" in the American sense, insofar as that
term refers to a single type of general-purpose legal services provider; rather,
their legal professions consist of a large number of different kinds of law-trained
persons, known as jurists, some of whom are advocates who are licensed to
practice in the courts. It is difficult to formulate accurate generalizations that
cover all the countries with multiple legal professions because each country has
traditionally had its own peculiar method of dividing up legal work among all its
different types of legal professionals.
Notably, England, the mother of the common law jurisdictions, emerged from
the Middle Ages with similar complexity in its legal professions, but then evolved
by the 19th century to a single division between barristers and solicitors. An
equivalent division developed between advocates and procurators in some civil
law countries; these two types did not always monopolize the practice of law, in
that they coexisted with civil law notaries.
Several countries that originally had two or more legal professions have
since fused or united their professions into a single type of lawyer. Most countries
in this category are common law countries, though France, a civil law country,
merged its jurists in 1990 and 1991 in response to Anglo-American competition.