What is the difference between an advocate and a lawyer?

Legal Systems: What is the difference among attorney, lawyer, barrister, solicitor, and advocate in India?

• Answer:

  There is no difference, because India has a fused legal profession and not a split profession. A split profession is where you need separate qualifications to perform various legal jobs. An attorney is a person who can be legally appointed to act on your behalf on the basis of a power of attorney. Moreover, there used to be separate class of lawyers called attorneys in India who used to perform the functions of a solicitor. American lawyers also are known as attorneys-at-law, although they may perform roles of barristers as well. There are two types of power of attorney - General Power of Attorney and Special Power of Attorney. A power of attorney holder may sell your assets for you, take all steps to protect your interest in matters and generally represent you in your absence for matters. Power of attorney for appearing on your behalf in Court for any case is called a Vakalatnama in India, and can be executed in favour of any advocate in India. No advocate is entitled to appear in a case without filing Vakalatnama in Court, or without the instruction of the advocate who has filed Vakalatnama on behalf of a party to the case. An advocate is a person who argues your case before the court. Any law graduate enrolled in the Bar Council of his state is called an advocate. A company's in-house lawyer cannot be an advocate as Bar Council of India rules prevent advocates from accepting any full-time employment. Barristers and Solicitors were the traditional division of the legal profession in England. Solicitors drew pleadings or written statements in a case to be filed before the court and performed functions of an attorney for clients. Barristers argued cases before the Court. Barristers were not allowed to interact directly with clients and were briefed by solicitors on behalf of clients. This enabled Barristers to maintain independence as they would not be unduly influenced by the client and could freely perform the role of an officer of the court. In cases where there was negligence by the solicitor the Barrister could advise the client of a possible claim against the solicitor. However this distinction is getting blurred in the UK as barristers and solicitors are beginning to perform functions traditionally associated with the other side of the legal profession. In India there is no such distinction between Barristers and Solicitors. However, advocates may describe themselves as solicitors to indicate that they perform roles as associated with solicitors in the UK, while advocates who have been called to the Bar in England may describe themselves as Barristers. The law and the court makes no such distinction though.