NORTHERN MICHIGAN LAWYER

The job of an attorney

Once admitted to practice by the highest court of a state (a function sometimes administered by the state's bar association), an American attorney may file legal pleadings and argue cases in any court in that state (except federal courts, which usually require a separate admission), provide legal advice to clients, and draft important legal documents (such as wills, trusts, deeds, and contracts). American attorneys use the term lawyering to refer to the art of practicing law. In some states, real estate closings may be performed only by attorneys, even though the attorney's role in a closing may involve primarily notarization of documents and disbursement of settlement funds through an escrow account.

Practicing law can be broadly generalized as:

1. Interviewing the client and identifying what is their legal matter or dispute;
2. Identifying the discrete legal and factual issues embedded within the client's larger problem;
3. Researching systematically each issue;
4. Deriving a solution that resolves some, if not all of the issues;
5. Executing it through specific tasks like drafting a contract or filing a motion with a court.

Most academic legal training is directed to identifying legal issues, researching facts and law, and arguing both the facts and law in favor of either side in any case. In litigation, attorneys spend much time discovering the facts of the case to develop a "theory of the case" that integrates facts and law in a way most favorable to their client. The discovery phase of a case sometimes turns into an unpleasant war of attrition over petty technicalities. Some attorneys believe approximately 50% to 70% of all funds spent on legal services in the U.S. cover discovery costs. In addition, there are a large number of attorneys whose practice specializes in activities that never involve them in litigation, such as writing legal opinions, advising clients, drafting contracts, preparing tax strategies, and preparing and prosecuting filings with government agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Patent and Trademark Office. It is not rare for such attorneys never to appear in court, and rarely or never to wear a suit or a tie, though this is all but absent in media depicitions of attorneys.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Lawyer".

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