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