Monday, March 2, 2009

What Do Attorneys Do?

By Richard Green

An attorney is a qualified legal professional that can be hired by either individuals or by businesses to represent their interests from a legal perspective. Some attorneys will work as individuals and some for larger law firms. You can use an attorney to simply help you make sure that an issue or process is handled in a legal manner or to represent your interests in a court case.

In some cases an attorney may work in a general legal field, taking on various types of cases on a regular basis. An attorney here will usually be referred to as working in a general practice. In others they may solely specialize in one aspect of the law -- these attorneys will therefore only be retained when a client needs their specific expertise.

The actual areas of specialization that an attorney can take up are many and varied. Some attorneys will only work for business clients (i.e. corporate attorneys) whilst others will tend to work more with consumers and their legal issues (i.e. family lawyers). Certain types of attorneys can work with either businesses or individuals and some will specialize in a narrow and completely different field such as military law or legal malpractice cases.

Most people will need to use an attorney at some point in their lives. In some regions, for example, you can use a real estate attorney to help with the sale or purchase of a property. One of the most common times for us to come across an attorney is when we are making a will or some other form of formal planning for the future.

In a lot of cases most people will only ever need the services of a general practice attorney to help them with everyday legal issues. The exception here is when you need the representation of a criminal attorney when you may find yourself looking to retaining a specialist attorney (although many general practices also include criminal specialists).

It is important to make sure that the attorney that you hire is qualified and experienced in a relevant field. If you find yourself involved in a criminal court case, for example, you really do need a court experienced attorney to support your case. In some cases you will retain an attorney here yourself and in others you may find yourself using a court appointed attorney.

In very general terms attorneys will tend to either represent individuals or companies/third party interests. So, for example, a criminal attorney will generally defend an individual. The prosecuting here will be done by an attorney that works for the state and who will usually work for the District Attorney's office.

Corporate attorneys can also have a variety of specialist fields. Some will work generally for their business clients and some will solely specialize in one aspect of corporate law. So, for example, an attorney might only work with intellectual property cases, product liability issues or within the entertainment industry, for example.

An attorney here will usually be retained by a business or by their corporate lawyers as the need arises although in some cases their specialist skills may be needed on a regular basis by the business in question. If this is the case they may be retained to work with the business full time.

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