Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Lawyer/archive1

Lawyer edit

I have been working on this article on and off for six months. Now it has probably more citations in it than nearly any other article on Wikipedia, and all the citations are to verifiable books and articles by distinguished lawyers and law professors. Some other users helpfully dug up some old public domain art for illustrations. And I've carefully balanced the article to take a worldwide view of a very complex subject. I think it's more than ready for featured article status. This is a self-nomination. --Coolcaesar 16:38, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment First sentence- "to give legal advice who advises clients in legal matters" shouldn't 'who advises' be 'to'? Many paras seem short. See WP:GTL--for sequence of see also, ext links, refs,etcRlevse 16:50, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Object. Lead is too short, see WP:LEAD. Most sub-sections are too short as well, either need expanding or merging. — Wackymacs 18:57, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- The point of keeping the paragraphs short is to keep what are very difficult concepts as simple and distinct as possible for non-lawyers. Merging many of the subsections (particularly under "Responsibilities") would only make things more confusing. The difficulty with the whole topic is that the American English language term "lawyer" does not translate well into other languages (or even other dialects of English) because of its narrow meaning in American English. But as I've pointed out at Talk:Lawyer, narrowing the article to the strict technical meaning in American English (my own dialect, by the way) and transferring most content to Jurist would be (1) even more confusing to non-lawyers and (2) offensive to many legal professionals outside of the United States, who call themselves lawyers because they don't speak English very well. The result would be massive edit wars probably requiring permanent semi-protection of the article. To avoid that scenario, I've taken a broad view of what a lawyer is instead (and many of the essays in the books I used as sources used a similarly broad view of what is a lawyer). --Coolcaesar 23:27, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Object: Although there is some coverage of history scattered throughout the article, there needs to be a history section outlining the history of the profession with special care for taking a worldwide view (as the nom says). This may just require the reorganization of existing material, but I suspect there are gaps which will be more obvious if the history were consolidated. savidan^{(talk) (e@)} 01:09, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Such a history would be impossible to write because the history of the legal professions in each country is so radically different (and I use the plural since most countries have several legal professions, not one). There are no books that even try to analyze the history of the legal professions worldwide (yes, I checked thoroughly on all major catalogs including WorldCat). To do such research myself from primary or secondary sources would be a monumental undertaking worthy of a book in itself (since many necessary sources are available only in Europe, Asia, or Africa), and would constitute original research in violation of the no original research policy.
- The only research available is sociological research like Rick Abel's (the guy who is so heavily cited in the article) which covers the profession as it exists at present or very close to the present. Using a lot of my spare time, I've already rewritten the article at a highly superficial level in order to take a worldwide view of what a lawyer is at present — relying heavily upon the pioneering work of Richard Abel and a more recent book by Lawrence Friedman. Yet I had tangents for weird exceptions in practically every section. Also, keep in mind that such an analysis of the present situation is possible only because the various legal professions in each country have begun to study each other over the past two decades, so that there was an article in this month's issue of ABA Journal about the possibility of a future global legal profession.
- Prior to 1970, the concept of a global legal profession was unimaginable because every country had its own extremely weird way of handling legal affairs. For example, as you probably noticed in the article, I mentioned that France merged its profession in 1990-91. But I left out a lot of details from Anne Boigeol's two essays about all the different types of legal professions in France and their long history. There were advocates, procurators, notaries, conseil juridiques, agents d'affaires, and so on. And that's only one country!
- The fact is, the article barely scratches the surface of what a lawyer is today, and it's already very long. All sources I have seen (including nearly all those books already cited in the Lawyer article) agree that the complexity arises from the fact that the word "lawyer" did not exist in most languages until very, very recently. Rather, everyone used more specific terms like advocate, procurator, notary, clerk, scrivener, etc., and each type handled their own little corner of the legal profession. Only North American English fully developed the concept of a lawyer as a general-purpose legal professional licensed to do both transactions and litigation. It's kind of like how English has the word "yes," which doesn't translate well into many other languages because they have separate words for "true," "I agree," "correct," "I want to do that," and "go ahead".
- To put in the history of the profession in two or three countries would make the article very long; to put in the history of the legal professions in five or six countries would make the article so long that no sane person would read it. I hope this makes the situation clear. --Coolcaesar 02:47, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Although I acknowledge that a lesser editor might slip into original research, I refuse to believe that it is impossible to discuss the history of the "lawyer" profession without delving into OR. As for lenght, this is a non-starter (see: Wikipedia: Summary style). We in fact have featured articles on Wikipedia for which no books exist directly on the subject; I believe there is a award for creating one, but I digress. I'm not asking you to write a book; just to consolidate the information that it already in the article and to track down some basic history type information like when lawyer's began to exist as a profession (note: this article does not have to cover the history of law, just the History of Lawyers). This could help you: Sadakat Kadri, The Trial: A History from Socrates to O.J. Simpson, HarperCollins 2005. ISBN 0007111215 savidan^{(talk) (e@)} 17:27, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is exactly that there is (historically) no such thing as a lawyer. The word has no precise meaning in the United Kingdom, nor did it historically in most countries. The idea that there is a category of persons called lawyers is really peculiarly North American. In my own jurisdiction you have three quite distinct strands of legal professional (though the idea of lawyer may be wider -- who knows?) (as well as many minor kinds and more recent developments): attorneys at law (who stand in for a party legally); advocates (who address a court -- developing out of counters and later serjeants); and notaries (whose job is different yet again). Nowadays almost all notaries are also barristers or solicitors, which simplifies things a bit, but this is a strong and ancient distinction. French legal history is quite radically different, and so on. I don't think you have the first idea what a horridly complicated thing it would be to try to do. It would take me several paragraphs just to give a thumbnail sketch of England and Wales and that's only one part of the United Kingdom. Personally I doubted whether lawyer was even a sensible article, but I think its been kicked into some useful shape that is not too POV. Still, it (like a lot of legal articles on wikipedia) has to resist the strong US POV of most lawyers who post. Really "lawyer" isn't a useful category if you don't have rules that require lawyers to do things. Francis Davey 16:28, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]