Manhattan Beach is a city located in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, USA. The city is on the Pacific coast, south of El Segundo, and north of Hermosa Beach. Manhattan Beach is the home of both beach and indoor volleyball, and surfing. During the winter, the waves can get as big as 12 feet. To the east are the cities of Hawthorne and Redondo Beach. It is one of the three Beach Cities in the South Bay. The city is a very affluent beach town within commuting distance of Los Angeles, making it one of the most expensive coastal towns in which to live in America, according to the most recent Fortune Magazine rankings. The median price of a single-family dwelling greatly exceeds the already high Los Angeles County median price by over 100%. Homes with an ocean view often exceed $3.25 million in cost. Downtown Manhattan Beach runs along Manhattan Beach Boulevard and the streets perpendicular to it in the area near the Manhattan Beach Pier up to Valley Drive. There are many restaurants and stores and a mixed-use center, called Metlox, named after a pottery factory formerly on the site that includes a boutique hotel and several restaurants and shops. The Manhattan Beach Library is near downtown on Highland Avenue two blocks north of Manhattan Beach Boulevard. The library is part of the County of Los Angeles Public Library system, and includes internet accessible computers, Wi-Fi, and access to the six million items in the county library collection. The Sepulveda Strip occupies the commercial zone, which runs north south through the city. This commercial zone is located south of Rosecrans Avenue, north of the border with Hermosa Beach, and along both sides of Sepulveda Boulevard. The Manhattan Village Mall is located on the southeast corner of Sepulveda Boulevard and Rosecrans Avenue. In addition, there are several other, smaller malls and shopping areas along Sepulveda Boulevard, which include a variety of restaurants, shops, service providers, office buildings and other commercial establishments.

Practice of Law

In its most general sense, the practice of law involves giving legal advice to clients, drafting legal documents for clients, and representing clients in legal negotiations and court proceedings such as lawsuits, and is applied to the professional services of a lawyer or attorney at law, barrister, solicitor, or civil law notary. However, there is a substantial amount of overlap between the practice of law and various other professions where clients are represented by agents. These professions include real estate, banking, accounting, and insurance. Moreover, a growing number of legal document assistants LDAs are offering services which have traditionally been offered only by lawyers and their employee paralegals. Many documents may now be created by computer-assisted drafting libraries, where the clients are asked a series of questions posed by the software in order to construct the legal documents.

In the United States, the practice of law is conditioned upon admission to practice of law, and specifically admission to the bar of a particular state or other territorial jurisdiction. The American Bar Association and the American Law Institute are among the organizations that are concerned with the interests of lawyers as a profession and the promulgation of uniform standards of professionalism and ethics, but regulation of the practice of law is left to the individual states, and their definitions vary.

In the United States, the rules of professional conduct generally prohibit an attorney from assisting a non-attorney from engaging in the unauthorized practice of law. An attorney therefore may not partner with or split fees with a non-attorney in the performance of any sort of legal work. Furthermore, an attorney may not employ a disbarred or suspended attorney in a legal practice where former clients of the disbarred or suspended attorney will be represented.