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Many solicitors deal with a range of legal work: preparing cases to be tried in the civil or
criminal courts; giving legal advice in the field of business and drawing up contracts; making all the
legal arrangements for the buying and selling of land or houses; assisting employees and employers;
making wills.
Barristers are mainly “courtroom lawyers” who actually conduct cases in court. Unlike
solicitors, they have rights of audience (rights to appear) in any court of the land, and so barristers are
those lawyers who appear in the more difficult cases in the higher courts.
The educational requirements to becoming a lawyer vary greatly from country to country. In
some countries, law
is taught by a faculty of law, which is a department of a university's general
undergraduate college. Law students in those countries pursue a Bachelor (LLB) or a Master (LLM) of
Laws degree. In some countries it is common or even required for students to earn another bachelor's
degree at the same time. Besides it is often followed by a series of advanced examinations,
apprenticeships, and additional coursework at special government institutes. In other countries,
particularly the United States, law is primarily taught at law schools. Most law schools are part of
universities but a few are independent institutions. Law schools in the United States (and some in
Canada and elsewhere) award graduating students a J.D. (Juris Doctor/Doctor of Jurisprudence) as the
practitioner's law degree (a professional degree). However, like other professional doctorates, the J.D.
is not the exact equivalent of the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), a university degree of
the highest level,
since it does not require the submission of a full dissertation based on original research.
The methods and quality of legal education vary widely. Some countries require extensive
clinical training in the form of apprenticeships or special clinical courses. Many others have only
lectures on highly abstract legal doctrines, which force young lawyers to figure out how to actually
think and write like a lawyer at their first apprenticeship (or job).
In most common law countries lawyers have many options over the course of their careers.
Besides private practice, they can always aspire to becoming a prosecutor,
government counsel,
corporate in-house counsel, judge, arbitrator, law professor, or politician.
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.
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