What Are the Differences Between Criminal Lawyers and Domestic Lawyers?

What is the difference between criminal lawyers and domestic lawyers? A criminal lawyer can be defined as a lawyer who specializes in criminal law where they represent defendants in criminal cases. For instance, criminal lawyers tend to oversee cases that include DUIs, sexual assault crimes, robbery, domestic violence crimes and many others.

In contrast to criminal lawyers, domestic law can be defined as a legal system created within a municipality, province or country in order to govern events, transactions and individuals who are located within the given territory or who hold a sense of connection to the territory itself. To further decipher the difference between both sets of law we must unveil what criminal lawyers and domestic lawyers actually do.

A criminal lawyer is responsible for defending the rights of the defendant, but there is much more to this act of defense than a simple one-line explanation. For example, a criminal lawyer can be contacted by the defendant directly or by court to be assigned to a particular case. Moreover, criminal lawyers can be public or private.

A public criminal lawyer is appointed cases by the government while a private criminal lawyer can work for a private firm or have an independent professional legal corporation. Various tasks of criminal lawyers include continued contact with the client to keep them informed of the trial progress and other elements, a criminal lawyer may also assist in jury selection, negotiate with the prosecutor regarding plea bargains and cross-examination and direct examination of witnesses to convince the jury in the defendant’s favour.

What does the job of a domestic lawyer entail? As mentioned previously, domestic law is concerned with various levels of law such as municipal, provincial and federal law. The key role of lawyers in this field of law is addressing legislative implications between the different levels of government and solving these discrepancies. For example, if one level of the legislative branch conflicts with another (such as provincial and municipal legislative conflicts) a domestic lawyer can assist in neutralizing this conflict, although the higher power legislative branch tends to dominate the lower in legislative authority.

To further differentiate between these two fields of law a topic of interest can be the various issues faced by criminal lawyers and domestic lawyers? A criminal lawyer may face ridicule by the general public for defending against individuals who have come in contact with the law but a point to remember here is that every human being has a right to a fair trial and are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

A criminal lawyer may also deal with vicarious trauma where clients who have faced excessively violence or extremely emotional experiences, some of this emotional strain can be transferred to the lawyer while they investigate and understand the complexity of the case itself. In comparison, a domestic lawyer may face extreme challenges in having to solve the discrepancies in legislation between three different government branches.

Furthermore, the various power differences among the three legislative branches mean that no matter how prepared a domestic lawyer is for a legislative case, the higher power branch may reject any persuasive or evidence-based criteria presented, solely based on power differences. Overall, it becomes apparent that criminal lawyers and their diverse roles differ quite noticeably in comparison to domestic lawyer positions.