england-and-wales barristers solicitor
What&#39;s the definition of an attorney at law?
<p>User Francis Davey States that &quot;Barristers are not, and have never been, attorneys (at law) in England - at least not as a result of their profession -- whereas all solicitors are.&quot;</p>
<p>What does that mean?</p>

<p>See <a href="https://english.stackexchange.com/q/31795">Attorney at law, is there any other kind?</a> As expatiated on English Stack Exchange,  <a href="https://www.upcounsel.com/attorney-in-fact-vs-attorney-at-law" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Attorney-At-Law can be distinguished from Attorney-In-Fact.</a> I quote from the <a href="http://jec.unm.edu/manuals-resources/glossary-of-legal-terms" rel="nofollow noreferrer">University of New Mexico's Judicial Education Center</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Attorney-at-Law –</strong> A licensed advocate or counsel authorized by the courts to prepare, manage and try cases in court, to prepare legal documents, or otherwise represent the interests of citizens.</p>
<p><strong>Attorney-in-Fact -</strong> A private person (who is not necessarily a lawyer) authorized by another to act in his/her place, either for some particular purpose, as to do a specified act; or for the transaction of business in general, not of legal character. This authority is conferred by an instrument in writing, called a letter of attorney, or more commonly a power of attorney.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/08/attorney-at-law.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Grammarphobia dated August 23 2012</a> answers your question.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Q: Why is a lawyer called an “attorney at law” and not an “attorney of
law”? Doesn’t “at” refer to a place? An MD is a “doctor of medicine”
not a “doctor at medicine.”</p>
<p>A: In American English, the terms “lawyer,” “attorney,” and “attorney
at law” are pretty much interchangeable, according to <em>Garner’s
Dictionary of Legal Usage</em> (3rd ed.). All three refer to “a licensed
lawyer.”</p>
<p>The legal dictionary, written by Bryan A. Garner, says “lawyer” and
“attorney,” the most common of these terms in the US, “are not
generally distinguished even by members of the profession.”</p>
<p>However, these three terms have had different meanings in different
places and times.</p>
<p>In England, for example, an attorney used to practice in common-law
courts and a solicitor in equity courts.</p>
<p>But the term “attorney” developed “an unpleasant smell about it,”
Garner writes, and “in the nineteenth century it was supplanted in
England by <em>solicitor</em>.”</p>
<p>(As the <em>Oxford English Dictionary</em> explains, the word “attorney” was
often used reproachfully to mean something like “knave or swindler.”)</p>
<p>In the US, on the other hand, the term “attorney” has become a
somewhat tony (or, as Garner puts it, more formal and less
disparaging) version of “lawyer,” while “solicitor” has taken on an
offensive whiff, as in signs like “No Peddlers or Solicitors.”</p>
<p>Why, you ask, is an attorney “at” law rather than “of” or “in” law?
Doesn’t “at” refer to a place?</p>
<p>Well, all three prepositions were used in the past, according to
published references in the <em>OED</em>, but they referred to the place
where the attorney practiced, not to the practice of law itself.</p>
<p>The <em>Oxford</em> editors say “attorney-at-law” (they hyphenate the term)
originally referred to a “professional and properly-qualified legal
agent practising in the courts of Common Law (as a <em>solicitor</em>
practised in the courts of Equity).”</p>
<p>Interestingly, the earliest <em>OED</em> citation for “attorney at law,” from
William Blackstone’s <em>Commentaries on the Laws of England</em> (1768),
refers to lawyers at admiralty and ecclesiastical courts, not courts
of common law:</p>
<p>“An attorney at law answers to the procurator, or proctor, of the
civilians and canonists.” (A procurator, or proctor, used to be a
legal representative in English admiralty or ecclesiastical courts.)</p>
<p>Why, you might wonder, has the term “attorney at law” survived when
“attorney” and “lawyer” can do the job just as well with two fewer
words?</p>
<p>Well, we could be cynical and say that the kind of lawyer who feels
it’s classy to be called an “attorney” would probably feel it’s even
classier to be called an “attorney at law.”</p>
<p>But there’s a more respectable reason for the survival of the longer
term. It distinguishes an “attorney at law” (a licensed lawyer) from
an “attorney in fact” (someone with a power of attorney to act for
another).</p>
<p>In fact, when the word “attorney” entered English in the 1300s
(borrowed from Old French), it referred to someone “appointed or
ordained to act for another; an agent, deputy, commissioner,”
according to the <em>OED</em>.</p>
<p>Here’s an example from Shakespeare’s <em>The Comedy of Errors</em> (circa
1594):</p>
<p><em>I will attend my husband, be his nurse,   Diet his sickness, for it is my office,   And will have no attorney but myself;   And therefore
let me have him home with me.</em></p>
<p>By the 1400s, the word “attorney” was being used to mean a lawyer
practicing in the common-law courts in England.</p>
<p>But around the same time it took on its negative sense. Here’s a later
example from Alexander Pope’s essay <em>Of the Use of Riches</em> (1733):
“Vile Attornies, now an useless race.”</p>
<p>And here’s one from <em>The Life of Samuel Johnson</em> (1791), by James
Boswell: “Johnson observed, that ‘he did not care to speak ill of any
man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was an <em>attorney</em>.’
”</p>
<p>The word “lawyer,” which entered English around the same time as
“attorney,” has roots in the Old English word for law, <em>lagu</em>.</p>
<p>From the beginning, according to the <em>OED</em>, it meant what it does now:
“One versed in the law; a member of the legal profession.”</p>
<p>We’ll end with this proverb from <em>The Arte of Rhetorique</em> (1553), by
Thomas Wilson: “The lawyer never dieth a begger. The lawyer can never
want a livyng till the yearth want men.”</p>
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