Why many European lawyers are still addressed as doctor
The first university degrees, beginning at Bologna's law school in the eleventh century, were law doctorates. That is why lawyers in Portugal, Italy, Malta and much of South America have traditionally been called doctor, while English lawyers, trained by apprenticeship or at the Inns of Court until 1846, never were.
Titles still vary by language. French and Dutch speakers address legal professionals as Maître or Meester, Poles informally use Mecenas, and Italians who pass the bar write Avv. before their names. In the United States most holders of the Juris Doctor degree skip the title doctor and may add Esquire instead. The American word attorney comes from the verb to attorn, meaning to hand one's rights and duties to someone else.
Countries also split the profession differently. England emerged from the Middle Ages with a tangle of legal occupations and by the nineteenth century had settled into two: barristers, who argue in court, and solicitors, who deal with clients and prepare cases. Traditionally barristers took instructions only through solicitors and, under the cab rank rule, had to accept work within their field at their usual rates. The United States, India and Pakistan fused the roles into a single profession, and France, a civil law country, merged several branches in 1990 and 1991 to compete with Anglo-American firms. Civil law systems generally have many kinds of jurists, only some of whom may argue in court.
Rules on who may give legal advice differ sharply. Some places license the activity and prosecute unauthorised practice, while England and Wales impose no general ban and Singapore has no admission requirements for in-house counsel. Venezuela requires everyone appearing before a judge to have a lawyer, while elsewhere people may represent themselves. In the United States, statutes keep lawyers out of some administrative hearings to preserve their informality.
Property transfers were long a gold mine. Conveyancing once supplied about half of English solicitors' income, and a 1978 study found it accounted for up to 80 percent of the contact between solicitors and clients in New South Wales. Outside the United States, many such monopolies trace to an 1804 law introduced by William Pitt the Younger in exchange for higher certification fees.
Source: Lawyer
