Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

Attorney vs. Lawyer: What Each One Can Legally Do Under New Hampshire Law

New Hampshire hands real legal power to two different kinds of attorney — and keeps a side door open for a plain citizen of good character.

Call the person you hired a lawyer, or call them an attorney, and nobody in a New Hampshire courtroom will blink. In everyday American speech the two words point at the same job, and no statute in this state hands out power based on which one you pick. The power lives in the paperwork. New Hampshire law recognizes one kind of attorney the supreme court licenses, a second kind any adult can create at a notary’s counter, and a courtroom side door written for ordinary citizens in the 1800s. Which one you are dealing with decides what they can legally do for you.

Two words, one meaning, three kinds of power

The internet keeps recycling a tidy distinction: a lawyer went to law school, an attorney passed the bar. New Hampshire law does not draw that line anywhere. RSA chapter 311 is titled Attorneys and Counselors, and the court rules swap the words freely. What the law does care about is whether the supreme court admitted you, and what a signed document says you may do.

Watch how the superior court’s own rule on non-lawyer representatives uses the vocabulary. Under Civil Rule 20, no person who is not a lawyer may appear for another party until a notarized power of attorney is on file “constituting said person his or her attorney” for that one case. In that sentence, the lawyer is the licensed professional and the attorney is the unlicensed neighbor. So much for the tidy distinction.

Sort the players by their paperwork instead and New Hampshire gives you three: the attorney-at-law the supreme court admits, the attorney-in-fact a power of attorney creates, and the citizen of good character an 1800s-era statute still lets a party bring to court.

What the license buys: the attorney-at-law

Admission runs through one gate. Under RSA 311:2, any citizen at least 18 years old, of good moral character and suitable qualifications, shall be admitted to practice as an attorney on application to the supreme court. Not a state agency, not the legislature. The court owns the gate, and RSA 311:7-g confirms its power to regulate the practice of law and to fund a professional conduct system with fees.

Most candidates get through the gate by passing the bar exam. New Hampshire also built a second door no other state had: the Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program at UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law. Under Supreme Court Rule 42(XII), graduates of the program are eligible for admission without further examination beyond the multistate ethics test, because the program itself functions as a two-year bar exam graded while they are still in school. The New Hampshire Bar Association marked the program’s twentieth year since approval in 2025 and counts more than 350 lawyers admitted through it.

Every admitted attorney then swears the oath in RSA 311:6, which has some of the best plain language in the statute book: the new attorney promises to “do no falsehood, nor consent that any be done in the court.”

Here is what admission unlocks. RSA 311:7 says no person shall be permitted “commonly” to practice as an attorney in court without admission and the oath. The license covers the trade itself: representing clients for a living, case after case, and holding yourself out to the public as counsel for pay. An out-of-state attorney does not carry that power across the border automatically; under Superior Court Rule 19 a nonmember needs pro hac vice permission, ordinarily with a New Hampshire attorney associated and present.

The license also comes with a leash. RSA 311:8 lets the supreme court inquire summarily into charges of fraud, malpractice, or contempt against an attorney and suspend or remove the guilty. RSA 311:10 adds a detail with real bite: while an attorney is suspended, any writ or process they draft for another person is void. Not defective. Void.

Practicing without the license runs into the state, not just the bar. Under RSA 311:7-a the attorney general, or the New Hampshire Bar Association itself, can sue to enjoin unauthorized practice, and RSA 311:7-b arms the attorney general with subpoena power to investigate it. RSA 311:11 goes further for corporations: a corporation that practices law commits a felony, and the human beings who help it commit misdemeanors.

The other attorney: the attorney-in-fact

The second kind of attorney never sees a bar exam. Under RSA 564-E, New Hampshire’s Uniform Power of Attorney Act, in force since January 1, 2018, a principal can appoint an agent — the statute says the title can be agent, attorney-in-fact, or anything else — to act in the principal’s place. No license, no character screening. Any adult you trust, or mistakenly trust, qualifies.

The authority can be enormous. A general power of attorney reaches banking, real estate, contracts, and claims, which is why RSA 564-E:105 refuses to let one exist quietly. The document must be signed and acknowledged before a notary, with a statutory warning stapled to it telling the principal the agent will hold “broad and sweeping powers” to sell property and spend money without advance notice or approval. The legislature wrote the warning label itself.

Some powers stay locked unless the document expressly grants them. Under RSA 564-E:201, an agent cannot make gifts, create or revoke trusts, change beneficiary designations, or create survivorship rights on general authority alone. Those are the moves that drain estates, so they require an explicit grant, and self-dealing gifts face extra limits.

In exchange for all that reach, the statute makes the attorney-in-fact a fiduciary. RSA 564-E:114 requires good faith, action within the granted scope, loyalty to the principal’s benefit, and recordkeeping, and it lets the people listed in RSA 564-E:116 demand an accounting the agent must produce within 60 days — 7 days when the decision touches health care. The petition list in 564-E:116 runs from the principal and family to the department of justice, the department of health and human services, and the county attorney. RSA 564-E:117 supplies the remedy: an agent who violates the chapter can be made to restore the lost value and pay the fees spent chasing it.

What the attorney-in-fact cannot do is practice law. The power of attorney lets your agent sell your house; it does not let them stand at counsel table and argue the closing dispute. That act belongs to RSA 311 — with one old exception.

The side door: any citizen of good character

RSA 311:1 is two sentences long, and its own source note runs the line back through seven earlier codifications of New Hampshire law before the RSA existed. A party may appear pro se, the statute says, “or may be represented by any citizen of good character,” and since a 1999 amendment the citizen is presumed to be of good character until someone demonstrates otherwise.

The courts did not repeal the side door. They put paperwork on it. Superior Court Civil Rule 20 bars a non-lawyer from appearing for any party unless of good character and until two documents are on file: a power of attorney, signed by the party and acknowledged before a notary or justice of the peace, appointing that person to appear in the particular action, and a sworn affidavit disclosing every unannulled misdemeanor and felony conviction, every prior finding that the person violated a court order or the conduct rules for non-lawyer representatives, and every prior case in which the person was allowed, or refused, permission to appear for someone else. The Family Division’s Rule 1.18 and the Probate Division’s Rule 14 run on the same terms.

Read that stack of requirements again and the three vocabularies collapse into one filing. The courtroom citizen of RSA 311:1 must first become an attorney-in-fact under a notarized power of attorney, and the judicial branch’s own affidavit form for the process, NHJB-2848-S, has the volunteer swear to exactly that title and acknowledge the conduct rules and the jurisdiction of the professional conduct system. Walk through the side door and you get policed like the professionals.

The door is also narrow by statute. RSA 311:7 bars the unadmitted from practicing “commonly,” and that one adverb carries the load: standing up once for your mother is what the statute tolerates; making a habit of it is unauthorized practice, with the attorney general’s subpoenas waiting.

The legislature recently cut a third path between citizen and counsel. Since January 1, 2023, RSA 311:2-a has allowed trained paraprofessionals — a degree plus two years of supervised law-related work, operating under an insured attorney — to represent lower-income parties in a defined list of matters: domestic violence protective orders, divorce and parenting cases, child support, landlord-tenant actions, and stalking petitions. The client’s household income must sit at or under 300 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, and the client gets written notice that the representative is not an attorney. The section repeals itself on January 1, 2030, unless lawmakers renew the experiment.

What this means when you are the one signing

Match the paper to the job. If you need someone to run your finances, sign closings, or manage property while you are away or incapacitated, that is attorney-in-fact work: a 564-E power of attorney, drafted narrowly, with the hot powers granted only if you mean it, and with the accounting demand in 564-E:114 remembered by the family members watching. If you need legal advice, drafting for hire, or a courtroom advocate across cases, only an admitted attorney-at-law can lawfully sell you that, and admission is a fact you can confirm before money moves. And if one trusted non-lawyer is going to speak for you in one case, the Rule 20 route exists, on the court’s terms, with their criminal record laid out under oath first.

New Hampshire never bothered to police the vocabulary. It polices the acts. Whoever is across the desk from you, ignore the noun on the business card and ask for the document behind it — an admission from the supreme court, a notarized power of attorney, or a Rule 20 filing. Every one of those is checkable. Check it.

Fact check

Editor’s note. Every factual claim above was checked against the statute or rule text named in the fact-check table before publication. Statutes and court rules quoted here were current as of August 29, 2026; confirm the live text before acting on it. This article is general information about New Hampshire law, not legal advice, and Granite State Report is not a law firm. Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a note identifying what changed and when.