cmon clm, you have to admit the USA does have a very litigious culture. I especially abhor the vast amount of medical malpractice suits that seem to happen.

we have llbs. law is undergrad here, but you do need to get into law school. most people do another degree at the same time as their law degree. to do this takes 5 years.

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Way back when, while at least in the 1960s and before, US law schools used to give their graduates LLB degrees. Eventually, this seemed not to make sense because everyone at a US law school already has a Bachelor's degree in something, and law school is definitely harder than getting a Ph.D., at least work wise if not politics wise. So, law schools started to hand out JD (Juris Doctor) as the degree. Of course, this creates another odd situation because the next degree that you can get after a JD is the LLM degree, which is a masters, not a doctorate. My law school had a decent number of foreign nationals that wanted, for whatever reason, to get an American law degree, and they were awarded LLMs. Most of them were from elsewhere in the Anglosphere so most had LLBs from their native countries.

Just to clear up some confusion about the work attorneys in the US do, most lawyers never step foot in a court room. Plaintiffs attorneys, the ones that will work on contingency fee basis, are a small segment of the total US lawyer population. A large percentage of attorneys are transactional attorneys - they work on business transactions. Another large percentage of attorneys do regulatory work in specific industrys - i.e., environment, health care, energy, labor, etc. Still another large percentage of lawyers is made up of specialists - i.e., securities, tax, ERISA, entertainment, government affairs, intellectual property, etc. Obviously, there are alot of litigators and bankruptcy attorneys who are required to make regular court appearances, but many of these people represent large corporations doing defense work, work as public defendants, attorney generals (and obviously assistant AG's), work for state/city/federal agencies, etc.

The vast, vast majority of students graduating from the top law schools want nothing to do with plaintiff work. I know 1 classmate of mine who choose to do plaintiffs work out of a class of more than 300 graduates. None of the top US law firms do plaintiffs work or would allow their attorneys to work on a contingency fee basis.

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You are right that a large number of US attorneys do not work in litigation. And, even most "litigators" rarely go to court. For example, I don't think I've been in court ten days this year, but I'm probably not a good example because I do a lot of appellate work. More and more law firms, even large ones, are starting to do some "plaintiff-side" work now. Not slip and falls or anything like that, but there is big money to be made suing other people, and the big law firms are very much about making as much money as possible.

I'm single and this thread is depressing. :)