English Grammar and Usage, Reader Polls

A Random Friday Poll: ‘Lawyer’ or ‘Attorney’?

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Happy Friday! Time for one of our quirky queries about style, usage, and grammar. On Fridays past, we have solicited your views on preferred email sign-offs, whether to refer to a marked-up document as a “blackline” or a “redline,” whether to use “pleaded” or “pled” in legal writing, how to spell a certain naughty word, and how to pronounce “substantive.”

Here is today’s question, from a curious reader:

Lawyer v. Attorney: I have always wondered what the difference between these two monikers is. I am both (I guess). Recently I introduced myself as an attorney at a party [in Austin, Texas]. My friend pulled me aside and said, “You should call yourself a lawyer; attorneys are ambulance chasers.”

I’m an associate at an Am Law 100 firm, and would love to know definitively whether I am a lawyer or an attorney. Do you think you guys could make a post about this subject?

We mentioned this question to one friend — not an attorney/lawyer herself, but the daughter of one. Her take:

Well, my dad refers to people he respects as attorneys, and people he hates as lawyers. We’re from Alabama. That’s the only distinction I’ve ever noticed.

So the Texans seem to like “lawyer,” but the Alabamans seem to favor “attorney.” Odd.

What do the dictionaries say? From Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary:

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attorney: one who is legally appointed by another to transact business for the firm; specifically, a legal agent qualified to act for suitors and defendants in legal proceedings.

lawyer: one whose profession is to conduct lawsuits for clients or to advise as to legal rights and obligations in other matters.

From Black’s Law Dictionary (6th ed.):

attorney: In the most general sense this term denotes an agent or substitute, or one who is appointed and authorized to act in the place or stead of another…. In its most common usage, however, unless a contrary meaning is clearly intended, this term means “attorney at law”, “lawyer” or “counselor at law”.

lawyer: A person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel, or solicitor; a person licensed to practice law….. See also Attorney….

The term “attorney” may emphasize the “agency” aspect of legal practice more. But this seems like a fairly narrow distinction. It’s not surprising, then, that the Associated Press Stylebook declares that “[i]n common usage the words are interchangeable.”

But the subjective, stylistic question of which term sounds better remains. How should practitioners of law introduce themselves at cocktail parties?

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What’s your view? Share it in the comments, and take our poll below.

LAWYER VS. ATTORNEY – Which do you use? [The PR Lawyer]

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