The profession of a legal adviser is a profession related to that of an advocate. The main difference between legal advisers and advocates is the possibility of practicing the profession while remaining in an employment relationship (legal advisers have this option, lawyers do not).

Since 1 July 2015, a legal adviser, as well as an advocate, has the possibility to act as a defense attorney in a criminal trial, i.e. in criminal and penal fiscal cases, however, only a legal adviser who is not employed may act as a defense lawyer.

The existing division into two corporations is considered artificial and has mainly historical significance. For this reason, there are ideas of combining legal advisers with lawyers in one common corporation.

Defining the term "liberal profession" is based, on the one hand, on the accepted and recognized linguistic customs, and on the other hand, on the analysis of the way it is performed. There are, for example, opinions that the profession is "free" as long as it is self-employed.

The concept of a liberal profession was already used by the legislator in the April Constitution of 1935, in Art. 76 sec. 1, that economic self-government is appointed for individual areas of economic life, including chambers of agriculture, industry and commerce, crafts, labor, liberal professions and other public and legal associations. On the other hand, the authors of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1997 abandoned this concept, replacing it with the phrase "professions of public trust" (Article 17 (1)).

The Polish legislator (unlike most other legislators) resigned from the attempt to introduce a normative definition of this concept into the current legal order, deciding on the solution consisting in each time defining a list of professions recognized as free for the purposes of specific provisions.