НАПИСАТЬ 5 ТИПОВ ВОПРОСОВ К ТЕКСТУ (ОБЩИЙ, АЛЬТЕРНАТИВНЫЙ, СПЕЦИАЛЬНЫЙ, РАЗДЕЛИТЕЛЬНЫЙ, ВОПРОС К ПОДЛЕЖАЩЕМУ) Although the US legal system is largely derived from England, the USA have not followed the English practice in the organization of the legal profession. Within the legal profession there is no formal division; there are no barristers or solicitors, a lawyer is simply known as attorney-at-law, or as attorney.
The legal profession is regulated at state, and not at federal level. In each state the requirements for admission to the bar are set by the supreme court or the legislature or the two acting together. Typically, graduation from an accredited law school is required; there are more than 170 such schools in the United States, almost all affiliated with universities. Law schools are in every major city and in almost every state. They are remarkably similar in curriculum and method, but different in prestige, quality of faculty and students. The stronger older schools are in Harvard, Yale, Berkley, and Chicago.
Law school requires a three-year course of study after a student has attended college for four years and received a bachelor's degree. Law school graduates are awarded the degree of Juris Doctor (J.D.). They are then eligible to take a state bar examination, a written examination lasting two or three days. These examinations are usually administered by a body of lawyers, known as bar examiners, acting under the authority of the state’s supreme court. Applicants who pass the bar examination and who also meet the requisite standards of character are admitted into the bar by that court. A lawyer admitted to one state’s bar can practise in another state only if he/she gets admitted in that state or the state recognizes the original state’s admission. On a national level, the profession is represented by the American Bar Association (ABA). Membership of the ABA is not compulsory.
An American attorney may be in court one day and be engaged in drafting legal papers the next. Moreover, a huge number of American lawyers are not involved with the courts; they spend their time in law offices, government bureaus, corporate buildings, conference rooms, and legislative halls. Only a relatively small number of practising lawyers are actively engaged in litigation. Civil litigation today, in contrast to that of several decades ago, consists in large measure of pre-trial activity such as drafting pleadings and motions, examining documents, questioning witnesses on depositions, preparing and answering interrogatories, and participating in negotiations with other lawyers and in pre-trial conferences with judges. In criminal cases, much time is devoted to investigation, negotiations between prosecutors and defence counsels about charges and pleas, and the sentencing process.
A major change in the nature of practice has been in the growth of the large urban law firms. They have expanded enormously in the number of their partners and associates, and they have become national and international, each firm typically having offices in several American cities and, increasingly, in foreign cities. Many of these firms have hundreds of lawyers spread throughout their several offices, and sometimes a single office will have two or three hundred attorneys. Another significant change in the nature of practice has been the increase in specialization among lawyers in both large and small firms. Typical areas of specialization are litigation, taxation, labor law, patent law, family law, trusts and estates, and various branches of administrative law.

Lawyers are expensive. Many people who need a lawyer have trouble paying the price. However, the state provides a lawyer, free of charge “public defender”, to anyone accused of a serious crime who cannot afford to pay on his own. For civil cases, the situation is even more complicated, few lawyers do some work free for poor clients. There are now some law firms organized for the “public interest”.