Advocate (Lat. advocatus). An advocate is generally defined 'the patron of a cause,' though it does not appear that the 'patrons' who, in ancient Rome, assisted their clients with advice and pleaded their causes, were ever called by that name. Even in the time of Cicero, the term advocatus was not applied to the patron or orator who pleaded in public, but rather, in strict accordance with the etymology of the word, to any one who in any piece of business was called in to assist another. There can be no doubt, however, that the forensic orators and jurisconsults of the later period of the republic received fees (honoraria) for their services, and occupied a position closely analogous to that of the advocate of modern times. The occupations of a jurisconsult and a forensic orator seem to have differed pretty much as those of a consulting and a practising counsel do with us. They might be exercised separately, but were generally combined. The office of the advocate or barrister who conducted the cause in public, was, in Rome, altogether distinct from that of the procurator, or attorney, or agent, who represented the client in the litigation, and furnished the advocate with information regarding the facts of the case. The distinction between these two occupations does not everywhere prevail; and in many of the states of Germany, in Geneva, in America, and in some British colonies, as, for example, in Canada, they are united in the same person, and there is a movement in Great Britain in this direction. The common arrangement is that a firm undertakes all legal business, and one partner does forensic, another conveyancing, business. The view on one side is that a qualified practitioner should be entitled to charge for his services, and to recover payment of accounts; on the other side, that the public interest requires a bar placed by custom and honourable feeling beyond the ordinary temptations of business. In England and Ireland, advocates are called Barristers (q.v.). In England the name advocate was confined to those formerly admitted by the archbishop to practise in the Court of Arches, and who formed a separate legal college. This was changed in 1857, and barristers now practise in the ecclesiastical courts. In Scotland, as in France, the more ancient name has been retained (see ADVOCATES). The advocates who practise under that name in the town and county of Aberdeen are, however, not advocates in this sense, but solicitors. In France, the avocat and avoué correspond very nearly to the barrister and solicitor in England.
In the United States, advocate, if used in a legal sense, is almost synonymous with counsellor. But there is in America no such distinction between the counsellor and solicitor as exists in Britain between barrister or advocate and solicitor.