What is the difference between a lawyer and an attorney?

In everyday American usage the terms are interchangeable, and no one will misunderstand you either way. The technical distinction that exists is that lawyer describes someone educated in law, a law school graduate, while attorney, short for attorney at law, describes someone admitted to a bar and authorized to represent clients and appear in court. The functional dividing line is licensure: a law graduate who has not passed a bar exam and been admitted cannot practice law or represent clients, whatever they call themselves.

Related titles cause more confusion than these two. Esquire, or Esq., is a courtesy title used after the name of a practicing attorney. Counsel or counselor refers to a lawyer advising or representing someone, and general counsel is the top in-house lawyer at an organization. A solicitor and a barrister are distinct roles in England and some other common law countries, where solicitors handle client work and barristers argue in higher courts, a split the US does not use. A paralegal is trained to support lawyers but cannot give legal advice or represent clients. And attorney also appears outside the profession entirely in power of attorney, which authorizes someone to act on your behalf and does not require them to be a lawyer at all, a genuinely common point of confusion.