Admission to the bar is a state exam. There is not a Federal exam for normal practice, but there are some specialties, such as patent law that requires another exam.
IRS lawyers would have to go to law school and pass the bar exam, same as any other lawyer. They may also have a good basis of accounting and a business degree.
Federal Republic.
federalism
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Alcohol for consumption is taxed and regulated at both the Federal and the State levels, so it is both a federal and a state offense. However, since the federal jurisdiction trumps the state jurisdiction only the federal government can charge you.
The kind of criminals that go to federal prison are the kind that perform federal felonies. These are people like bankrobbers, kidnappers that take people across state lines, or people who try to fraud the government.
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This is commonly called federalism.
There are crimes that can be committed at different levels in the United States -- this is because there is a distinct division between the state government and the federal government. This is something that was set up when the country was founded so that the federal government would not get too much power; many of the states were used to acting as their own entities during the Revolution and did not want to lose all of this strength. The result is that a federal lawyer is needed when a case has moved beyond state control and into the realm of the nation's government -- and he or she is not needed for these smaller, more localized cases that do not involve the federal government. An example of a case that a federal lawyer might work on is one involving the selling of government secrets to another country who is consider an enemy of the first nation. This is something that could impact all of the states. The secrets were likely stolen from the federal government itself. When the accused person goes to court, federal lawyers will be brought in to run the case. They will be in charge of both the prosecution and the defense, fighting to see that justice is brought against the person who sold the secrets. They will be acting on behalf of the federal government in this situation. The big thing that makes federal lawyers important, that makes it important for the right kind of lawyers to be involved in these cases, is that the laws are different on the federal level than they are on the state level. For example, the state governments are in charge of things such as minimum wage, while the federal government is in charge of national security. A federal lawyer is someone who will know the differences in the laws, who will understand what things fall under federal jurisdiction and what things do not. They will be able to most effectively work the case. In many practical ways, federal lawyers are just the same as other lawyers. They will still interview and cross-examine witnesses. They will still research old cases to figure out what precedents have been set. In all of these little ways relating to the case, they will do the same things that other lawyers would do. They will just be working with a different set of laws and regulations.
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