Editing Lawyer (section)

==History==
{{Main|History of the legal profession|History of the American legal profession}}{{Globalize section|date=December 2023}}[[File:Quentin Massys - Portrait of a Man - National Gallery of Scotland.jpg|upright|thumb|16th-century painting of a [[civil law notary]], by Flemish painter [[Quentin Massys]]. A civil law notary is roughly analogous to a common law [[solicitor]], except that, unlike solicitors, civil law notaries do not practice litigation to any degree.]]

===Ancient Greece===
The earliest people who could be described as "lawyers" were probably the [[orators]] of ancient [[Athens]]. However, Athenian orators faced serious structural obstacles. First, there was a rule that individuals were supposed to plead their own cases, which was soon bypassed by the increasing tendency of individuals to ask a "friend" for assistance.<ref>Robert J. Bonner, ''Lawyers and Litigants in Ancient Athens: The Genesis of the Legal Profession'' (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1927), 202.</ref> However, around the middle of the fourth century, the Athenians disposed of the perfunctory request for a friend.<ref>Bonner, 204.</ref> Second, a more serious obstacle, which the Athenian orators never completely overcame, was the rule that no one could take a fee to plead the cause of another. This law was widely disregarded in practice, but was never abolished, which meant that orators could ''never'' present themselves as legal professionals or experts.<ref>Bonner, 206.</ref> They had to uphold the [[legal fiction]] that they were merely an ordinary citizen generously helping out a friend for free, and thus they could never organize into a real profession.<ref>Bonner, 208–209.</ref> If one narrows the definition of lawyers to people who could practice the legal profession openly and legally, then the first lawyers would be the orators of [[ancient Rome]].<ref>Hazard, 18.</ref>

===Ancient Rome===
A law enacted in 204 BC barred Roman advocates from taking fees, but the law was widely ignored.<ref>[[John Crook (classicist)|John A. Crook]], ''Law and Life of Ancient Rome'' (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 90.</ref> The ban on fees was abolished by [[Claudius|Emperor Claudius]], who legalized advocacy as a profession and allowed the Roman advocates to become the first lawyers who could practice openly—but he also imposed a fee ceiling of 10,000 [[sestertius|sesterces]].<ref>Crook, 90. Crook cites [[Tacitus]], ''Annals'' VI, 5 and 7 for this point. For more information about the complex political affair that forced Emperor Claudius to decide this issue, see ''The Annals of Tacitus'', Book VI ([[Franklin Township, Erie County, Pennsylvania|Franklin Center, PA]]: The Franklin Library, 1982), 208.</ref> This was apparently not much money; the [[Satires of Juvenal]] complained that there was no money in working as an advocate.<ref>Crook, 91.</ref>

Like their Greek contemporaries, early Roman advocates were trained in [[rhetoric]], not law, and the judges before whom they argued were also not legally trained.<ref>Crook, 87.</ref> But very early on, unlike Athens, Rome developed a class of specialists who were learned in the law, known as jurisconsults (''iuris consulti'').<ref name="Crook, 88">Crook, 88.</ref> Jurisconsults were wealthy amateurs who dabbled in law as an intellectual hobby; they did not make their primary living from it.<ref name="Crook, 88" /> They gave legal opinions (''responsa'') on legal issues to all comers (a practice known as ''publice respondere'').<ref>Crook, 89.</ref> Roman judges and governors would routinely consult with an advisory panel of jurisconsults before rendering a decision, and advocates and ordinary people also went to jurisconsults for legal opinions.<ref name="Crook, 88" /> The Romans were the first to have a class of people who spent their days thinking about legal problems, and this is why their law developed in a systematic and technical way.<ref name="Crook, 88" />

[[File:Sarcofago avvocato Valerius Petrnianus-optimized.jpg|thumb|Detail from the sarcophagus of Roman lawyer [[Valerius Petronianus]] 315–320 AD. Picture by [[Giovanni Dall'Orto]].]]
During the [[Roman Republic]] and the early [[Roman Empire]], jurisconsults and advocates were unregulated, since the former were amateurs and the latter were technically illegal.<ref>Crook, 90.</ref> Any citizen could call himself an advocate or a legal expert, though whether people believed him would depend upon his personal reputation. This changed once Claudius legalized the legal profession. By the start of the [[Byzantine Empire]], the legal profession had become well-established, heavily regulated, and highly stratified.<ref>A. H. M. Jones, ''The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey'', vol. 1 ([[Norman, Oklahoma|Norman, OK]]: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 507.</ref> The centralization and bureaucratization of the profession was apparently gradual at first, but accelerated during the reign of Emperor [[Hadrian]].<ref>Fritz Schulz, ''History of Roman Legal Science'' ([[Oxford]]: [[Oxford University Press]], 1946), 113.</ref> At the same time, the jurisconsults went into decline during the imperial period.<ref>Schulz, 113.</ref>

By the fourth century, advocates had to be enrolled on the bar of a court to argue before it, they could only be attached to one court at a time, and there were restrictions on how many advocates could be enrolled at a particular court.<ref>Jones, 508–510.</ref> By the 380s, advocates were studying law in addition to rhetoric, thus reducing the need for a separate class of jurisconsults; in 460, [[Leo I (emperor)|Emperor Leo]] imposed a requirement that new advocates seeking admission had to produce testimonials from their teachers; and by the sixth century, a regular course of legal study lasting about four years was required for admission.<ref>Jones, 512–513.</ref> Claudius's fee ceiling lasted all the way into the Byzantine period, though by then it was measured at 100 [[Solidus (coin)|solidi]].<ref name="Jones, 511">Jones, 511.</ref> It was widely evaded, either through demands for maintenance and expenses or a ''[[sub rosa]]'' [[barter (economics)|barter]] transaction.<ref name="Jones, 511" /> The latter was cause for [[disbarment]].<ref name="Jones, 511" />

The notaries (''tabelliones'') appeared in the late Roman Empire. Like their modern-day descendants, the civil law notaries, they were responsible for drafting wills, conveyances, and contracts.<ref name="Jones, 515">Jones, 515.</ref> They were ubiquitous and most villages had one.<ref name="Jones, 515" /> In Roman times, notaries were widely considered to be inferior to advocates and jury consults.

===Middle Ages===
[[File:Initial N- James I of Aragon Overseeing a Court of Law - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|[[James I of Aragon|King James I]] overseeing a medieval court, from an illustrated manuscript of a legal code]]
After the fall of the [[Western Roman Empire]] and the onset of the [[Early Middle Ages]], the legal profession of Western Europe collapsed. As James Brundage has explained: "[by 1140], no one in Western Europe could properly be described as a professional lawyer or a professional canonist in anything like the modern sense of the term 'professional.' "<ref>James A. Brundage, "The Rise of the Professional Jurist in the Thirteenth Century", <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">20 Syracuse J. Int'l L. & Com. 185</span> (1994).</ref> However, from 1150 (when {{lang|la|[[Decretum Gratiani]]}} was compiled) onward, a small but increasing number of men became experts in [[canon law of the Catholic Church|canon law]] but only in furtherance of other occupational goals, such as serving the [[Catholic Church]] as priests.<ref>Brundage, 185–186.</ref> From 1190 to 1230, however, there was a crucial shift in which some men began to practice canon law as a lifelong profession in itself.<ref>Brundage, 186–187.</ref>

The legal profession's return was marked by the renewed efforts of church and state to regulate it. In 1231, two French councils mandated that lawyers had to swear an oath of admission before practicing before the bishop's courts in their regions, and a similar oath was promulgated by the [[papal legate]] in London in 1237.<ref>Brundage, 188.</ref> During the same decade, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire [[Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor|Frederick II]], the king of the [[Kingdom of Sicily]], imposed a similar oath in his civil courts.<ref>Brundage, 188–189.</ref> By 1250, the nucleus of a new legal profession had clearly formed.<ref>Brundage, 190.</ref> The new trend towards professionalization culminated in a controversial proposal at the [[Second Council of Lyon]] in 1275 that ''all'' ecclesiastical courts should require an oath of admission.<ref name="Brundage, 189">Brundage, 189.</ref> Although not adopted by the council, it was highly influential in many such courts throughout [[Europe]].<ref name="Brundage, 189"/> The civil courts in England also joined the trend towards professionalization; in 1275 a statute was enacted that prescribed punishment for professional lawyers guilty of [[Deception|deceit]],<ref>[[Statute of Westminster 1275]], ch. 29.</ref> and in 1280 the mayor's court of the city of London promulgated regulations concerning admission procedures, including the administering of an oath.<ref>John Hamilton Baker, ''An Introduction to British Legal History'', 3rd ed. (London: Butterworths, 1990), 179.</ref> And in 1345, the French crown promulgated a royal ordinance which set forth 24 rules governing advocates, of which 12 were integrated into the oath to be taken by them.<ref>Lucien Karpik, ''French Lawyers: A Study in Collective Action, 1274 to 1994'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 21.</ref>

The French medieval oaths were widely influential and of enduring importance; for example, they directly influenced the structure of the advocates' oath adopted by the [[Canton of Geneva]] in 1816.<ref name="rice">Carol Rice Andrews, [https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2120&context=smulr ''Standards of Conduct for Lawyers: An 800-Year Evolution''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200709113600/https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2120&context=smulr |date=2020-07-09 }}, 57 SMU L. Rev. 1385 (2004).</ref><ref name="Boon_Page_215">{{cite book |last1=Boon |first1=Andrew |title=Lawyers and the Rule of Law |date=2022 |publisher=Bloomsbury |location=London |isbn=9781509925230 |page=215 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G0aGEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA215 |access-date=29 October 2023}}</ref>  In turn, the 1816 Geneva oath served as the inspiration for the attorney's oath drafted by [[David Dudley Field]] as Section 511 of the proposed New York Code of Civil Procedure of 1848, which was the first attempt in the United States at a comprehensive statement of a lawyer's professional duties.<ref name="rice" />