Solicitor

In the English legal system, solicitors traditionally dealt with any legal matter, including conducting proceedings in courts, although solicitors were required to engage a barrister as advocate in a High Court or above after the profession split in two. Minor criminal cases are tried in magistrates' courts, which constitute by far the majority of courts. More serious criminal cases still start in the magistrates' court and may then be transferred to a higher court.

The majority of civil cases are tried in county courts and are almost always handled by solicitors. Cases of higher value (£100,000 or above) and those of unusual complexity are tried in the High Court, and barristers, as the other branch of the English legal profession, have traditionally carried out the functions of advocacy in the High Court, Crown Court and Court of Appeal.

In the past, barristers did not deal with the public directly. This rigid separation no longer applies. Solicitor advocates with extended rights of audience may now act as advocates at all levels of the courts. Conversely, the public may now hire and interact with a barrister directly in certain types of work without having to go to a solicitor first[6] as a result of the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 removing the monopoly of barristers to act as advocates and granting solicitors rights of audience in specified circumstances.

Solicitors now frequently appear in the lower courts and, subject to passing a test and thereby obtaining higher rights of audience, increasingly in the higher courts such as the High Court of Justice of England and Wales and the Court of Appeal. While the independent bar continued to exist in a largely unchanged state, a few firms of solicitors employed their own barristers and solicitor advocates to do some of their court work. The rules preventing barristers from being directly instructed were revised to allow direct instruction by certain organizations such as trade unions, accountants, and similar groups. Additionally, barristers who have completed the Bar Council's "Public Access" course can take instructions directly from members of the public under the Public Access Scheme.

Regulation of both barristers and solicitors was reviewed by David Clementi on behalf of the Ministry of Justice in 2004. He delivered his final recommendations in December 2004[7] which included proposals for a more unified regulatory system and new structures for cross-profession work. Many of his recommendations were enshrined in the Legal Services Act 2007.

The breakdown in the strict separation between barrister and solicitor was expected to go further following recognition by the Act of the so-called "Legal Disciplinary Practice" (LDP)[8] (from 31 March 2009) and "Alternate Business Structure" (ABS)[9] (from 6 October 2011) bodies, which allow more flexibly structured legal practices.

Solicitors in England and Wales who wish to practise must pay an annual fee to obtain a practising certificate. This fee is paid to the Law Society of England and Wales, which represents the profession. The Solicitors Regulation Authority, though funded by these fees, acts independently of the Law Society. Together, the two bodies make up the complete system of professional regulation for solicitors. Complaints about solicitors, if not satisfactorily resolved by the solicitors' firm, may be made to the Legal Ombudsman.

The training and qualification required to enter the profession by being admitted as a solicitor is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). There are two graduate routes of entry into the profession. Prospective solicitors holding a qualifying law degree[10] proceed to studying the Legal Practice Course. Those holding a non-law degree must in addition have completed a conversion course[11] prior to enrolling on the Legal Practice Course. Once the Legal Practice Course has been completed, the prospective solicitor usually must then undertake two years' apprenticeship, known as a training contract, with a firm entitled to take trainee solicitors.[12] The Legal Practice Course and training contract can also be undertaken simultaneously although this is less usual.[13] The training contract was formerly known as an articled clerkship. The SRA completed an extensive review of qualification routes into law that has brought about the introduction of the Solicitor Qualifying Examination (SQE). The new route was introduced from 1 September 2021 with the first examinations to take place in November of the same year.[14]

It is possible to qualify as a solicitor without having attended university by being admitted as a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives, and thereafter completing the required number of years of practical experience, and studying for the Legal Practice Course.

Although now on a downward trend, there is a large representation of lawyers in the UK with privately educated backgrounds. 37% of barristers and 21% of solicitors are from a private school background, compared to 7% of the overall UK population.[15]

Lawyers qualified in foreign jurisdictions, as well as English barristers, can take the Qualified Lawyers Transfer Scheme (QLTS) assessment, a fast-track route for qualification as an English solicitor which can be completed in a shorter or longer period of time, depending on the legal background of the candidate. There is no training or experience requirement under the QLTS, which comprises two assessments; a multiple choice test (180 multiple choice questions on 14 subject matters) and two practical assessments, the OSCE1 and OSCE2 which include nine written papers, three oral papers and three mixed written-oral papers on the most important areas of practice for solicitors (business law, probate, conveyancing, civil litigation, criminal litigation). The scheme is open to qualified lawyers in many common law and civil law jurisdictions, such as the US, Australia, South Africa, Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, Russia, China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, India, Pakistan, all EU member states, as well as other countries.

Historically, solicitors existed in the United States and, consistent with the pre-1850s usage in England and elsewhere, the term referred to a lawyer who argued cases in a court of equity, as opposed to an attorney who appeared only in courts of law.[21] With the chancery or equity courts disappearing or being subsumed under courts of law, by the late 19th century members of the fused profession were called "attorneys", with "solicitors" becoming obsolete.

In modern American usage, the term solicitor in the legal profession refers to government lawyers.

On the federal level, departmental solicitors remain in the Department of Labor,[22] Department of the Interior,[23] and the Patent & Trademark Office.[24] The Solicitor General of the United States is the lawyer appointed to represent the federal government before the United States Supreme Court.

In various states, the title "solicitor" is still used by town, city and county lawyers. These states include Delaware,[25] Georgia,[26] Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and West Virginia.

In South Carolina, criminal trials in the state's judicial circuits are overseen by a "circuit solicitor" whose role is analogous to that of district attorney in most other states.[27]

In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the professional organization for government lawyers was formerly known as the City Solicitors and Town Counsel Association.[28]

In the US, "solicitor" is also used to describe a traveling salesman (with a pejorative connotation roughly equivalent to the British English word tout) as in the signed warning on public places of accommodation, "No Soliciting".[29] Signs bearing the phrase "No Soliciting" may appear near entrances to private residences in the US. In addition to warding off salesmen, these signs are also used to deter proselytizing by religious groups such as Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses with a history of door-to-door canvassing in the US.