Settle it once and for all: In the US, is there any difference between an attorney and a lawyer? Are people who graduate law school (without passing the bar) considered lawyers?

I need out of being an attorney, at least for a little while. I can’t continue at my current job the way things are going: I think when I got licensed (3.5 years ago) and started at my firm, I was a bit burned out from law school and having to study for and take the bar multiple times. Circumstances at my job only made my feeling of burnout worse from the beginning, and my feeling has only grown exponentially since. (continued in reply)

I started the JD next program yesterday and am so happy there’s an alternative to the LSAT. I know a lot of people are against the program because it’s new, but a standardized test cannot determine the type of future attorney I will be.

How much of your “full self” do you bring to work? I was told that having a visible baby monitor in the background of a remote internal meeting looked uncommitted to the practice. We are an industry full of adults with families, aging parents, and personal lives, yet we’re expected to project this sterile, robotic image of total availability 24/7. I wasn’t interacting with my child at all, and I was fully paying attention to the meeting. But I’m not going to pretend that I’m not a parent.

I left my associate attorney position to do a federal clerkship for a year. How do I explain to friends and family that it’s not like a demotion even though I won’t be practicing as an attorney? All the non-law people I tell seem confused as to why I would take a lower paying, temporary, non-attorney job for a year.