Attorney vs Lawyer

I believe I might be of assistance here. In the United States, a lawyer is generally considered a person who provides legal advice and appears in court. An attorney is considered to be exactly the same thing as a lawyer. In England, lawyers and attorneys are called barristers. There are myriad reasons for why two terms exist, but to be sure, there is a lot of misinformation out there which states that a lawyer is merely someone who has graduated from law school. This is incorrect.

In the United States, the terms "lawyer" and "attorney" are used interchangeably by the general public and attorneys alike. If you have graduated law school, but are not licensed to practice law, you are neither a lawyer nor an attorney and you cannot give legal advice. Providing legal advice without being licensed to practice law is a crime known as the "unauthorized practice of law." Indeed, even lawyers who are licensed to practice in one state can be charged with the unauthorized practice of law for providing advice to a person in a different state in which that lawyer is not licensed to practice.

As I previously mentioned, the terms "lawyer" and "attorney" are used interchangeably by lawyers and laypersons alike. By way of example, I am an attorney and I refer to myself as a Fairfax criminal defense attorney under some circumstances. However, when dealing with providing representation for a specific crime, I would refer to myself as a Fairfax marijuana lawyer. The interchangeable phraseology is never really dependent upon anything other than the term the writer or speaker feels like using in that particular moment. What I have found is that most laypersons, when conducting an internet search, will look for the term "lawyer."

At the end of the day, it does not matter whether you use the term lawyer or attorney. They are both understood to mean the exact same thing - a person licensed to practice law. Whether they are actually engaged in its practice is not relevant. All that matters is they have the ability to practice as a result of passing the bar exam.