Pre-reading task: Scan the text and find the information about the functions, rights and duties of barristers and solicitors.

In the English legal system a practising lawyer must hold one of two professions; he must either have been admitted to practiсeas a solicitor or as a barrister.

The barrister is usually thought of primarily to be an advocate, since this is the work in which he is most often engaged. He has the exclusive right of audience as an advocate before all the superiorcourts and he can also take cases in the inferior courts if he wishes to do so.

The solicitor is known to be an advocate in the inferior courts but he is more familiar to the public in his role as a general legal adviser.

A significant difference between the two professions is that members of the public are able to call at a solicitor’s office and seek his advice in a personal interview; whereas a barrister can only be consulted indirectly through a solicitor.

Most barristers are professional advocates earning their livingby the presentation of civil and criminal cases in court. A barrister is supposed to be capable of prosecutingin a criminal case one day and defendingan accused person the next; or of preparing the pleadingfor a plaintiff in a civil action one day and doing the same thing for a defendant the next. In this way the barrister attains a real degree of objectivity and of independence of mind. He is likely to become a specialist at advocacy, not a specialist prosecutor or a specialist defence counsel.

In practice there is a great deal of paper work involved in the pretrial stages of a case, but particularly so where a civil action is in question. Barristers are not allowed to form partnerships, but may share the same set of chambers and also share a clerk, so that there are very close links between them.

The name-plates of firms of solicitors are an everyday sight in cities and towns in England and Wales; and although a one-man practice is not rare, the trend is towards having several solicitors in partnership. This gives them the opportunity to specialize to some extent, so that when one partner may spend all his time on conveyancing, another will deal with litigation and so on.

Exercise 16

a) Match two columns to make word-combinations and translate them:

1. superior a. an office

2. to be admitted b. living

3. to call at c cases

4. personal d. to practice

5. to earn e. stage

6. to present f. interview

7. pretrial g. court

8. to defend h. pleading

9. to prepare i an accused

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Writing. Write a summary of the text, using phrases from Unit 2 exercise 27.	\|	B) Find 5 sentences in the text with the given word-combinations.

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