Wesley Smith is an excellent lawyer and a thoughtful writer. But unlike the current White House press secretary, he became a lawyer (or attorney) only when he passed the bar exam. The distinction he draws between an unlicensed “lawyer” and licensed “attorney” may have some semantic appeal, but it has no support in the law. The terms are generally synonymous. Merely graduating law school allows you to hold yourself out to the world as a juris doctor (JD) — a degree that law schools made up when they decided that “bachelor of laws” was unbecoming — but it does not permit you to hold yourself out as a lawyer or attorney.

Take, for instance, the rules of my home state (er, Commonwealth) of Virginia:

No non-lawyer shall engage in the........

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