Why do lawyers specify that they are “attorneys at law?” Are there some attorneys that are not “at law?”

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Why do lawyers specify that they are “attorneys at law?” Are there some attorneys that are not “at law?”

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Anonymous 0 Comments

A decision that is legally binding, made by some other than yourself is the definition of having an attorney. An attorney can be a healthcare proxy that gets power of attorney to make medical decisions in your BEST interest.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m ashamed to admit that I’m an attorney at law and did not know the answer to this question…

Anonymous 0 Comments

So I could be an attorney at chow and responsible for the snacks?!

Anonymous 0 Comments

Yep.

An attorney is just a representative; Someone that you’ve said can speak for you

A lawyyer is a legal representative; or an attorney, at law

Anonymous 0 Comments

And why do they say “in real time?” Is there “unreal time?”

Anonymous 0 Comments

This is why I hate the word “attorney” but in the US it is synonymous with “lawyer”.

An attorney is just someone who represents you as an agent really. I can grant “power of attorney” to any one with minimal qualifications, like a friend or relative or even a homeless person. But a lawyer is licensed to practice law.

Anonymous 0 Comments

You just gave me the most Truman Show-esque moment of my life.

About 30 minutes ago I was mowing the lawn and for some reason the song “date rape” by Sublime was stuck in my head. There’s a line in it that goes “looked up her local attorney at law.” As I was daydreaming on the mower I thought “I wonder why they add the ‘at law’” — this was the first time I had ever wondered this in my life. Got off the mower, opened Reddit, and immediately saw this post. Seriously what the fuck

Anonymous 0 Comments

In America, “attorney”, “attorney at law”, “cousel”, “counsellor”, “lawyer” and “esquire” all mean the same thing since there is only one type of lawyer (though there are some specialties like patent law). The difference is their historical development, which has been pretty well explained in this thread.

Anonymous 0 Comments

1) it comes from the British system where there were two separate court systems court of law and Court of equity. So they were attorneys at law and attorneys at equity. The systems have since been merged and equitable resolutions can come from the regular Court system.
2) there’s another set of distinctions. There are attorneys at law and attorneys in fact. Attorneys in fact are people who have been appointed to represent/help someone but are not certified bar-passed attorneys. Representative agents of real estate trust or corporations are one example, every corporation has to have a registered agent in a state so people know who to deal with when for example serving them with a subpoena etc. These same people can be the representative in court even though they’re not attorneys so they are attorneys in fact not attorneys in law.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Attorney at law is the term of art – the actual title of being an ‘attorney’ in relation to law. It’s shortened to ‘attorney’ in common discussion, but in other contexts it is given its full title to both be accurate, but also clear that it is indeed an attorney relating to law, not an attorney of some other kind. e.g. power of attorney as others have explained.