Advocates offer the public a distinct and independent service which complements the services provided by the solicitor branch of the profession. In particular:-

Advocates offer specialist legal representation and advice to clients of solicitors and of members of certain other professional bodies. Thus practitioners in Scotland, in the cities and in rural areas alike, are able to serve their clients by drawing on a pool of independent lawyers who are both skilled court pleaders and also advisers on a wide range of legal problems both general and specialist.

Collectively, Advocates offer an unrivalled range of skilled, independent, objective legal services. The fact that they have no contractual relationship with clients helps them to maintain a valuable extra degree of detachment relative to all of the services which they provide.

The advantages of a full-time commitment to advocacy cannot be over-estimated. These include enhanced litigation skills, greater reliability in advisory work and the ability to take on cases of any duration.

For more than 300 years, the Faculty has maintained within Parliament House the Advocates Library, accepted generally as the finest working law library in the British Isles. Certainly, the legal profession in Scotland has no other of such range and quality. Thus Member of Faculty are uniquely equipped with the resources necessary to render professional services of the highest standard.

The Faculty does not operate a Chambers system in the manner of the English Bar. Instead a service company, Faculty Services Limited, incorporated in 1971, provides appropriate administrative facilities for all those members who wish to use them. These include clerking services and all arrangements for the charging and collection of fees. The low overheads associated with centralised administration permit Members of Faculty to offer services at competitive rates.