A lawyer refers to a person who is entrusted or designated to provide legal services such as litigation agency or defense business for the parties.
Lawyers must pass the legal professional qualification examination and obtain the lawyer's practice certificate according to law before they can practice. According to the nature of work, lawyers can be divided into full-time lawyers and part-time lawyers; According to the scope of business, lawyers can be divided into civil lawyers, criminal lawyers and administrative lawyers; According to clients and working status, lawyers can be divided into social lawyers, corporate lawyers and public lawyers. Lawyer's business is mainly divided into litigation business and non-litigation business.
As far as the qualifications of "lawyer" are concerned, they include: first, they have certain legal knowledge, and according to the provisions of the current Lawyers Law, they have legal knowledge of "bachelor degree or above in law major in colleges and universities" or "bachelor degree or above in other majors in colleges and universities"; Secondly, pass the national "legal professional qualification examination"; The third is to obtain a practicing certificate with the approval of the national judicial administrative department; Fourth, provide legal services to the society and take it as a profession.
Therefore, a lawyer refers to a practitioner who has passed the national legal professional qualification examination, obtained a lawyer's practice certificate according to law, accepted entrustment or designation, and provided legal services to the parties. The nature of a lawyer is to provide legal services for the society, and he is a professional legal service worker.
Among the above four basic characteristics, the first one or two are possessed by other legal workers, such as law enforcement workers, judicial trial workers (judges) and judicial procuratorial workers (prosecutors); The latter two items are unique to lawyers.
Article 28 of the current Lawyers Law allows lawyers to engage in the following businesses:
(a) to accept the entrustment of natural persons, legal persons or other organizations as legal advisers;
(two) to accept the entrustment of the parties in civil cases and administrative cases, to act as agents and to participate in litigation;
(3) Accepting the entrustment of criminal suspects and defendants in criminal cases or legal aid agencies to act as defenders according to law, accepting the entrustment of private prosecutors in private prosecution cases, victims in public prosecution cases or their close relatives to participate in litigation as agents;
(four) to accept the entrustment and represent the complaints of various litigation cases;
(five) to accept the entrustment and participate in mediation and arbitration activities;
(6) Accepting entrustment to provide non-litigation legal services;
(seven) to answer questions about the law and write litigation documents and other documents related to legal affairs.