Counsellor At Law

An officer in the supreme court of the United States, and in some other courts, who is retained by a party in a cause to conduct the same on its trial on his behalf. He differs from an attorney at law. In the supreme court of the United States, the two degrees of attorney and counsel were at first kept separate, and no person was permitted to practise in both capacities, but the present practice Is otherwise; Weeks, Att. 54. It is the duty of the counsel to draft or review and correct the special pleadings, to manage the cause on trial, and, during the whole course of the suit, to apply established principles of law to the exigencies of the case; 1 Kent 307. In England the term "counsel" is applied to a barrister. Generally, in the courts of the various states the same person performs the duties of counsellor and attorney at law. In giving their advice to their clients, counsel have duties to perform to their clients, to the public and to themselves. In such cases they have thrown upon them something which they owe to their administration of justice, as well as to the private interests of their employers. The interests propounded for them ought, in their own apprehension, to be just, or at least fairly disputable; and when such interests are propounded, they ought not to be pursued per fas et nefas; 1 Hagg. Adin. ^-li'. An attorney and counsellor is not an officer of the United States, he is an officer of the court. I lis right to appear for suitors and to argue causes is not a mere indulgence, revocable at the pleasure of the court, or at the command of the legislature. It is a right of delinquency; Ea> parte Garland, 4 Wall. (U. S.)333, 18 L. Ed. 366. See Attorney; Privilege; Confidential Communications; Disuab; Barium lb. COUNT (Fr. cotnte; from the Latin comes). An earl. It gave way as a distinct title to the Saxon earl, but was retained In couuttss, viscount, and as the basis of county. Termes dc la ley; 1 Bla. Com. 398. See Comes. In Pleading. (Fr. contc, a narrative). The plaintiff's statement of his cause of action. This word Is In our old law-books used synonymously with declaration; but practice has introduced the following distinction. When the plaintiff's ■ lit embraces only a single cause of action, and he makes only one statement of it, that statement is called, Indifferently, a declaration or count; though the former is the more usual term, liut when the suit embraces two or more causes of action (each of which, of course, requires a different statement), or when the plaintiff makes two or more different statements of one and the same cause of action, each several statement Is called a count, and all of them, collectively, constitute the declaration. In all cases, however, in which there are two or more counts, whether there is actually but one cause of action or several, each count purports, upon the face of It, to disclose a distinct right of action, unconnected with that stated in any of the other counts. One object proposed in inserting two or more counts in one declaration when there is in fact but one cause of action, is, in some cases, to guard against the danger of an insufficient statement of the cause, where a doubt exists as to the legal sufficiency of one or another of two different modes of declaring; but the more usual end pro; in inserting more than one count in such case is to accommodate the statement to the cause, as far as may be, to the possible state of the proof to be exhibited on trial, or to guard, if possible, against the hazard of the proofs varying materially from the statement of the cause of action; so that, if one or more of several counts be not adapted to the evidence, some other of them may be so; Gould, PL c. 4, ss. 2, 3, 4; Steph. PL Doctrina Viae. ITS; 3 Com. Dig. 1291; Dane, Abr. Index. In real actions, the declaration is usually called a count; Steph. PI. 29. Common Counts.