After completing the 1 year certificate course in Hong Kong, you can choose to be a trainee lawyer in a law firm or a trainee barrister in the Law Society.
When students taking PCLL courses choose to become junior lawyers or barristers, they can choose to become barristers in addition to their own interests and hobbies, as long as they take lawyer courses. If you don't take this course, you can only choose to be a junior lawyer.
Junior lawyers have been practicing in law firms for two years, and barristers have been practicing for 1 year, with good performance and no violations of law and discipline. Usually, he can be appointed as a solicitor or barrister by the High Court. Even the internship period of junior lawyers is one year longer than that of barristers, and the elective courses are different.
2, the court authority is different.
Because of the translation of the word barrister, it is translated into a barrister or a barrister. In addition, when they left the court after the trial of major cases, they were often interviewed by the news media, which led many people to mistakenly think that barristers could not speak in court. In fact, this is a problem of inaccurate translation. Both have the right to appear in court, but solicitors and barristers have different hearing rights.
3. The nature of the work is different
Junior lawyers are subordinate to law firms and handle legal affairs related to ordinary clients, and are supervised by the Law Society of Hong Kong. In addition to civil and criminal litigation cases, lawyers will also handle commercial transactions, real estate transfer, inheritance, company liquidation, and provide general legal advice, with a wide range of work. Individual lawyers will specialize in a specific field according to their internship experience, such as real estate sales. Other lawyers provide various professional services according to the business nature of their law firms.
According to the relevant regulations, barristers usually have to be referred by solicitors and cannot accept direct entrustment from clients. Besides, barristers, unlike solicitors, are not affiliated with their law firms. Each barrister is actually a sole proprietorship and operates independently, but is supervised by the Hong Kong Bar Association.