Legal Profession Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Since the founding of the United States, law and politics have been clearly intertwined. Alexis de Tocqueville reported that, in the United States, most legal issues become political issues and vice versa. Tocqueville also stated that lawyers were the American aristocratic class, influencing both law and politics in this country. Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the writers of the Constitution were lawyers. Today the United States has one of the highest numbers of lawyers per capita in the world and has a very high number of lawyers in elected and appointed government positions.

A Broad And Porous Profession

The legal profession in the United States is quite broad and flexible, especially when compared to most other countries. American lawyers provide a wide range of services, work for a wide range of entities, and have the ability to enter and leave the profession quite easily. In other countries, lawyers are usually restricted to specific roles while American lawyers can perform many tasks done by no lawyers elsewhere. Law degrees are graduate degrees in the United States, requiring that the student complete a four-year university degree before entering law school. American law schools tend to use similar teaching methods and a common substantive cur riculum. The goal of law schools is to teach students to “think like a lawyer,” and many scholars argue that lawyers thus share a common worldview, decision-making style, and other aspects of professional socialization to a higher degree than found in many other professions.

Because the legal profession is so amorphous in the United States, it is a challenge for the political scientists who study it. Some political scientists study the relationship between lawyers and their clients; some study law firms or other collections of lawyers; some study lawyers who handle a specific type of case, such as divorce lawyers, environmental lawyers, or death penalty lawyers; some study the role of lawyers in settling disputes without resorting to the courts; some study lawyers at the trial level courts; some study appellate lawyers; some study the role of lawyers in interest groups or social movements; some study lawyers who work for the government in various capacities; some study lawyers in elected offices; and some study lawyers as judges. In general, then, political scientists either study the impact of lawyers in the legal system or the impact of lawyers in the broader political system. Sometimes these two areas merge.

Lawyers In The Courts

In the legal arena, many lawyers work hard to keep their clients out of court (for example, tax lawyers, corporate lawyers, professional sports agents, trusts and estates lawyers). Some lawyers focus mainly on litigation in the trial courts (for example, criminal prosecutors and defense attorneys or personal injury lawyers).While litigators make up a very small percentage of U.S. lawyers, they often get the most attention because their work can be effectively dramatized in novels, television, and the movies. Litigators must present facts, evidence, and witnesses to a trial judge and perhaps to a jury. The main job of litigators is to persuade the legal fact-finders (either judges or juries) to accept their version of the facts in a live public performance in the courtroom. Thus trials determine unique questions of fact that probably do not have many applications to other cases.

Appellate lawyers, on the other hand, do most of their communicating in writing. In the United States, appellate courts have multiple judges hear a case, but no juries. The panel of judges (three, five, seven, or nine at the U.S. Supreme Court) must determine questions of law, which can have enormous impact on future court cases. The appellate lawyers must write legal briefs on the questions of law at issue, with oral arguments serving as the mechanism for lawyers to explain the arguments they already made in writing. Appellate lawyers must help the courts determine how the current case should be decided, but more importantly how future cases should be determined. Because appellate courts make a great deal of public policy in the United States, appellate lawyers play a key creative role in helping courts shape those eventual policies.

At both levels, sometimes lawyers merely represent the best interests of their clients and sometimes the lawyers have an independent legal and perhaps even political influence on the process. Lawyers certainly translate their clients’ legal needs into legal language and help them navigate the legal process, but lawyers also can bring their own ideas, goals, and values to the case. Cause lawyers may care more about the broader political nature of the case than they do the specific needs of their individual clients. Repeat players, or parties who frequently use the legal system, may have more control over the actions of their lawyers than do so-called one shutters, who depend more on the legal expertise and experience of their lawyers. Some political scientists would argue that clients with more financial resources receive better legal representation than those with fewer resources. Lawyers often adapt their legal approaches to the norms and needs of communities of practice. Political scientists have linked the effectiveness of lawyers in both negations and in litigation to their reputation and to their reliability.

Lawyers In The Broader Political System

In addition to their roles in the courts, lawyers also affect governmental decisions in other ways. Many lobbyists in the United States are lawyers, and they often draft legislative and regulatory proposals for the interest groups who employ them. They attempt to convince governmental decision makers to enact policies that their groups support. They also may lobby the courts by bringing politically charged cases to the judiciary. Lawyers also serve as important leaders of various social movements in this country.

A great deal of work has been done on lawyers as judges, because almost all judges in the United States are recruited from the legal profession. Because judicial selection methods for both federal and state judges are highly political in nature, judges must have had some political contacts to become judges. There is also some scholarly work on lawyers as elected or appointed governmental officials in the executive and legislative branches. Many U.S. presidents have had law degrees, while a large percentage of the U.S. Senate and a smaller proportion of the U.S. House are lawyers. Lawyers also dominate many state legislatures.

Lawyers have a variety of advantages when running for elected office in the United States. Some elected offices at both the state and federal level, such as district attorneys or attorneys general, are only open to candidates with law degrees. These offices are often stepping stones to higher elected office such as governors or legislators. Because political parties are generally weak in the United States when compared to those in other countries, candidates for elected offices tend to be individualistic political entrepreneurs. They need the public speaking skills, negotiation skills, and decision-making skills that lawyers usually possess and that are necessary in both campaigning and governing in the United States. Some practicing lawyers, especially in some state legislatures, use their elected offices to recruit clients for their law practices if they can do both simultaneously. Lawyers also come and go from the practice of law quite easily, which makes it easier for them to take the risks of losing an election .With so many lawyers in various governmental positions, American voters seem quite comfortable electing more lawyers. Some individuals with political aspirations actually attend law school simply to enhance their chances of eventually getting elected into political office. Thus Tocqueville was quite right in referring to lawyers as the political class in the United States.

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