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Types of Legal Professions
England is almost unique in having two different kinds of lawyers. They are solicitors and barristers. There are about 50,000 solicitors and they make up the largest branch of the legal profession in England and Wales. They are found in every town, where they deal with all day-to-day work of preparing legal documents for buying and selling houses, making wills, etc. Solicitors also work on court cases for their clients, prepare cases for barristers to present in higher courts, and may represent their client in a Magistrates’ court.
There are about 5,000 barristers who defend or prosecute in the higher courts. Although solicitors and barristers work together on cases, barristers specialize in representing clients in court and the training and career structures for the two types of lawyers are different. In court, barristers wear wigs and gowns to keep the formality. They are experts of the Law. They are rather remote figures. Barristers do not have public offices in any street. They work in chambers, often in London. To qualify as a barrister you have to take the exams of the Bar Council. These are different from solicitors’ examinations. Only barristers can become judges in England. The highest level of barristers has the title QC (Queen’s Counsel).
There are a few hundred judges, trained as barristers, who preside in more serious cases. There is no separate training for judges.
A jury consists of 12 people (jurors), who are ordinary people chosen from the Electoral Register. They listen to the evidence given in court in certain criminal cases and decide whether the defendant is guilty or innocent.
There are about 30,000 magistrates (Justices of the Peace or JPs), who judge cases in the lower courts. They are usually unpaid and have no formal legal qualifications.
Coroners have medical or legal training and inquire into violent or unnatural deaths.
New words:
- solicitor — поверенный;
- barrister — адвокат высшего ранга;
- attorney — адвокат в США;
- Queen’s Counsel — королевский адвокат;
- plaintiff — истец;
- defendant — ответчик;
- juror — присяжный;
- guilty — виновный;
- innocent — невиновный;
- divorce — развод;
- to recover debts — заплатить долги;
- to qualify — получить профессию;
- remote — отдаленный, недоступный;
- to conduct the proceedings — проводить заседания;
- to pass the sentence — выносить приговор;
- coroner — следователь по тяжким преступлениям;
- violent — насильственный;
- to inquire — расследовать.
Questions to the text:
1. What are two types of lawyers in England?
2. What kind of problems does a solicitor deal with?
3. How does anybody qualify as a solicitor?
4. What are barristers experts in?
5. How does anybody qualify as a barrister?
6. Why are barristers rather remote figures?
7. How does anybody qualify as a judge in England?
8. What are the judge’s functions?
9. What is a coroner?
10. What do jurors decide?
Exercise 2. Translate the following sentences into Russian:
1. The judges in the House of Lords are the ten «Lords of Appeal in Ordinary».
2. The asked the robber on trial why he had broken into the house.
3. This lawyer has many clients. He is very popular.
4. Solicitors and barristers work only in England and Wales.
5. Only barristers can become judges in English Court above a Magistrates’ Court.
6. Attorneys act as both advocates and advisors in the USA.
7. As advocates they represent one of the parties in criminal and civil trials.
8. The prosecutor blamed the defendant for telling a lie.
9. If the person in Britain has a legal problem, he will go to see a solicitor.
10. Clerks of the court look after administrative and legal matters in the courtroom.
Exercise 3. Fill in the gaps with the words given below, translate the text into Russian: attorneys, trials, evidence, counsel, to suggest, matters, trial work, to spend, witnesses, trial