The Final Frontier is all about exploration! Or at least, that’s what we all want to believe. But just as often, you run into a bit of a mess by offending new people, not knowing the rules, breaking a few laws, and that’s when… the captain of a starship appoints himself as your lawyer?
No one is bothered by that, huh?
Over on Reddit, queenofmoons made a fair point about the Star Trek universe: Why doesn’t Starfleet put lawyers on starships? Not even one?
It’s not as though they don’t exist in the future; in fact, we do encounter them throughout the run of the Trekverse. But even though starships contain all sorts of experts and scholars and professionals, lawyers never seem to show up on the docket. And when you’re encountering new species with new systems of law on a regular basis, you’d think that would be kind of important, even from a liability standpoint. As queenofmoons puts it:
Even when we do see someone execute a feat of reasonable legal cunning—Picard buying time from the Sheliak, for instance—the fact remains that on a ship of a thousand people, expected to make first contact with new governments with little support, preparing for a legal challenge should not be whatever the busy ship’s captain and its senior mental health professional can whip up on the fly, but a recurring eventuality to prepare for.
Sure, some of this is simply down to who the show wants to spotlight—Trek shows are about their crews, and unless you’re planning to make the starship lawyer a regular in the cast, fans aren’t going to be as interested in watching them argue cases. But shouldn’t there be enough for them to do? It’s amazing watching Picard and Riker go up against each other in “Measure of a Man,” but that doesn’t change the fact that the two of them should never have needed to create this spectacle in the first place. Picard and Riker are both military guys, and their outlying interests don’t have anything to do with law, though Picard’s love of anthropology and archaeology has a few ties in that regard.
Could it have more to do with our societal assumptions about, and aversion to, attorneys? queenofmoons thinks that could be a piece of the problem:
It might just be that, well, lawyers are often perceived to be slimy, and as such simply had no place in a future that didn’t even have a use for money, and where people where abundantly honest.
Could that really be it? A future utopian society should have no room for lawyers? It seems silly, knowing that there are plenty of lying folks in the history of Trek, and plenty of situations where having lawyers around could have been infinitely helpful. And nevermind the starships… what about space stations like Deep Space Nine? Shouldn’t they have someone on staff to adjudicate?
Check out the Reddit thread over here!
Interstellar Law and Sapient Legal Rights are required classes at Starfleet academy. We do see lawyers on TNG Trek, they are all of the officers. There, solved it with no need to do the usual dragging of the show.
The Federation’s law offices are based in Sector 001. When you have subspace communications, you don’t need lawyers tagging along on every ship. Have a pressing legal issue? You… Better Call Sol.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Starfleet has lawyers, at least in the 23rd century (Areel Shaw in “Court Martial”).
When it comes to “encountering new species with new systems of law”, I doubt that lawyers would be as useful as anthropologists and diplomats (Starship captains are trained to be diplomats, see “Metamorphosis”). Lawyers are trained to know the intricacies of one legal system, not to anticipate new ones on a regular basis.
A legal officer trained in the legal systems of Federation members would have been a convenience in several episodes, as would a trained diplomatic officer to second the Captain’s efforts.
Has anyone asked Melinda M. Snodgrass this question since she’s a lawyer, written fantasy and science fiction about the law, and written for Star Trek: Next Generation?
@@.-@ John Hemry’s “JAG in Space” novels show just how interesting and exciting such stories can be. Perhaps, in the spirit of the “Starfleet Corps of Engineers” novel series, someone could do something similar with lawyers in the Star Trek Universe.
Apparently they never have problems with their teeth because other than one instance on Enterprise when Flox took care of a cavity for T’Pol I’ve never seen any mention of a dentist on board a starship!
@1,
Two classes doesn’t make one a lawyer. I took three history classes; I’m not a historian.
@7/scotty1964: That isn’t hard to believe. People have already less problems with their teeth these days than they used to fifty years ago. Health technology is improving all the time.
It’s silly, but not sillier than the thing about having no money. I wonder if anyone has ever written a really plausible utopia?
Just what they need. New Monsters they can’t keep off the bridge.
The US Coast Guard does not put lawyers on its vessels. Each officer is a Federal law enforcement official, and trained accordingly. Perhaps Star Fleet, which is more of an exploratory service than a war fighting service, should have similar policies. A person trained in law enforcement is much more useful than a lawyer out in the field.
i dunno, same reason the senior officers are the only ones embarking on highly dangerous away missions?
@12: This makes sense in a lot of cases, but not so much in “Measure of the Man”, which involves a formal legal dispute, being decided solely under Federation law, about an issue everybody acknowledged was both novel and significant. It is a bit weird to think that anybody would be OK with relying on law enforcement officers (or diplomats, or soldiers) to conduct a case like that.
As I recall (possibly poorly), the script even acknowledges that there are trained lawyers around; they’re just too busy to deal with the case. Which makes you wonder what Starfleet lawyers are dealing with that is more important than deciding whether an active officer is a sentient with legal rights or not.
If memory serves, the base where Data’s hearing occurs on had a woefully understaffed JAG office and had no officers to act as attorneys, which implies that Starfleet does have lawyer officers, just not there at that time. It is possible that may have been part of the strategy by the group wanting to study Data, by getting to him in a place with an overwhelmed legal office who might just want to wash their hands of the issue.
Obviously the story reasons are that you want to put your regulars on the spot, Riker having to competently argue a position he does not believe in n order to give Data a chance, instead of guest actors playing lawyer roles that the audience has to be told know and respect Data and will only appear in this episode.
At one point Odo mentions the presence of a magistrate on DS9, who at least has the power to fine Quark for malicious behavior: https://youtu.be/Kg8o__6bEEY?t=40s
I agree with JanaJansen In space when you encounter a new planet the first thing you need to know about them is what are their Laws and Social Customs. You need to know this to avoid any confusion or needless conflict!!!!
@6: I like the fact that the discussion on the Reddit thread plays with the idea of a Star Trek reboot of JAG, and that idea sounds pretty interesting, but considering what the original JAG spun off, and the fact that CBS owns Star Trek right now, I’m kind of worried that the end result would be NCIS: Starfleet.
Any complex society will have lawyers; even without money (while a post-monetary economy is sf, it’s certainly more likely than FTL), there will be things like child support, crimes (serial killers and rapists aren’t motivated by money); in a military, there will be insubordination, desertion, etc.
While the USCG cutters may not have lawyers, USN ships frequently do: http://www.public.navy.mil/surfor/cpr-1/Pages/NavyLawyerExpandsHorizonsatSeaPracticingOperationalLaw.aspx
This quote, “Operational legal counsel is crucial in the Navy, which deals with complex missions and politically sensitive topics such as disputed territories, strait transits and multiple Status of Forces (SOFA) agreements with host nations. ” (Donnely, Lt. Theresa, “Navy Lawyer Expands Horizons at Sea Practicing Operational Law”, 2014-02-07, http://www.public.navy.mil/surfor/cpr-1/Pages/NavyLawyerExpandsHorizonsatSeaPracticingOperationalLaw.aspx) would tend to imply that having lawyers aboard major USN warships, especially those operating in coastal areas, is not unheard of.
If US/Western practice regarding law at sea is supposed to be the historical precedent, the question is whether a case is being tried under military (i.e. naval) law, which means the individuals involved (defendant, victim, etc.) are all military, and the criminal offense being alleged took place within military jurisdiction (aboard ship, for example), then a court martial or its futuristic equivalent is the proceeding in question, and the court (judges/panel) and both the prosecution and defense are going to be military personnel.
If those involved include civilians (working at a naval base “ashore,” for example) then the case goes to the civilian authorities, which could be the locals or the “feds”, based on the equivalent of the status of forces agreement.
If the “warship” is functioning as law enforcement on a “frontier” (historically, the sea or a federal territory like Alaska before statehood, then the equivalent of the USCG’s law enforcement detachments, or the US Marshal’s Service on land, comes into play, although as law enforcement, not the judge and jury – who, in the US tradition, would be a federal judge or magistrate ashore somewhere.
So if Data is facing a court-martial, essentially, the prosecutor, defender, and judges will be military personnel, but not otherwise.
Jonathan Crowe @18- I would totally watch NCIS: Starfleet.
Or CSI: Sigma Iotia II.
I think there’s a bad assumption being made that law needs to be a specialized profession. There are times in the past where the practice of law was similar to how it’s portrayed in Trek: an occasional professional lawyer, but mostly covered by well educated generalists.
You may as well ask why there’s not many specialized HR staff (folded into Operations) or programmers (folded into Engineering). It makes sense that most legal work would be folded into executive staff, that’s common today in many organizations. My company uses (non-lawyer) executives to review contracts, negotiate disputes, draft agreements, etc. Generally the other side of the table is also a non-lawyer. There’s nothing about law that makes it any harder than physics, piloting, engineering, or any of the other skills the senior staff in Trek exhibit.
@22,
Lawyer, as a profession, has been the norm for western civilization for millennia; they’ve been ubiquitous since the rise of large-scale polities. I think it’s unlikely “lawyer,” as a distinct profession, will die out short of a civilization-ending apocalypse. Much of the current disdain for lawyers is driven by people who A) are angry that their wrong-doing is brought to count and B) that the “wrong sort” are being helped.
The issue isn’t whether it’s harder than physics or engineering; it’s different and is a skill set equally as time consuming to acquire.
Because Star Trek’s Starfleet is heavily based on modern and historical navies, and it’s unusual even today and almost unheard of in the past for lawyers to go to sea aboard warships.
Until fairly recently, the prosecuting and defence counsels in a court martial didn’t have to be lawyers; the defence counsel, the “prisoner’s friend”, was simply an officer from the prisoner’s unit, and the judges would be senior officers, not specialist lawyers (with the exception of a specialist judge advocate). Having Picard or Riker arguing before a court is not unusual in this context.
And, as others have pointed out, it’s not clear how much use a human lawyer trained in Federation law would be in helping to navigate a (literally) completely alien legal system. The ships of the Age of Exploration are the closest parallel; captains like Cook were definitely expecting to encounter foreign legal systems, perhaps even ones that had never been encountered by British people before, but they didn’t bring along a London solicitor. He wouldn’t have been any use.
@24,
Cook, and the other captains from the Age of Exploration and before wouldn’t be concerned with legal issues beyond buying supplies in “civilized” ports. Perhaps if Cook had a lawyer he wouldn’t have gotten himself killed in a local dispute in Hawaii. A lawyer, like a surgeon, would not be in the ship’s military hierarchy in the same way as an the chief engineer or the first lieutenant.
Cook, and the other captains from the Age of Exploration and before wouldn’t be concerned with legal issues beyond buying supplies in “civilized” ports.
Legal Issues That Cook And Other Captains Would Be Concerned With Other Than Buying Supplies – A Short Non-Exhaustive List
Maintaining discipline and enforcing the law on board ship
Customs duties and related issues in foreign waters and in foreign ports
The extent of territorial waters and their rights of passage within them
Legal issues surrounding the claiming of new territory
Legal relations between naval personnel, civilian ships’ officers, military officers and civilian shore authorities in British and foreign ports and on the high seas
International law and how it relates to interactions with foreign warships, foreign merchant ships and foreign officials
Perhaps if Cook had a lawyer he wouldn’t have gotten himself killed in a local dispute in Hawaii.
Perhaps if Cook had a wallpaper designer he could have calmed the restive Hawaiians by redecorating their houses in striking floral prints.
swampyankee @@@@@8:
Two classes doesn’t make one a lawyer. I took three history classes; I’m not a historian.
The argument would be that since Starfleet Academy has people to teach these classes, there are at least some professional specialists in those areas, as well as the possibility that some Starfleet personnel could take more classes, possibly majoring in the subject, and maybe even get some kind of graduate degree. (US military academies offer classes in relevant legal subjects, and the services also have provisions for officers to attend law school and return to be judge advocates.)
AlanBrown @@@@@ 12
The US Coast Guard does not put lawyers on its vessels.
But the US Coast Guard does not, as far as I’m aware, routinely travel to previously undiscovered foreign countries.
ajay @@@@@ 24
And, as others have pointed out, it’s not clear how much use a human lawyer trained in Federation law would be in helping to navigate a (literally) completely alien legal system.
I agree with this (and with the idea that a London solicitor wouldn’t have been much help to Cook). What this suggests is that Starfleet ships would need specialists in general interspecies and alien law, who would, in our terms, be a kind of combination of international law specialists and anthropologists. In a multi-species entity like the Federation, which grows by peaceful negotiations with sovereign alien words, there would naturally be people specializing in this kind of thing.
And, arguably, one of the points of Starfleet is that it’s an advance on things like the 18th C British Navy — e.g., more willing to treat militarily weaker foreign entities with respect. Which implies having people who specialize in that sort of thing, rather than letting the captains just wing it. (For what it’s worth, Cook did sometimes have people like Joseph Banks, who functioned as a kind of proto-anthropologist on Cook’s first voyage, though he was by profession a botanist.)
@1 & @8:
I’m going to double down on the “two classes don’t make you a lawyer” comment. As an accounting major, I had to take two classes in Business Law. (I ended up taking three and getting a Business Law minor.) One of the four tests required to be a CPA is a test on law. I am hardly a lawyer, just an accountant. I know just enough law so that I can usually tell when we need to get a lawyer involved.
What this suggests is that Starfleet ships would need specialists in general interspecies and alien law, who would, in our terms, be a kind of combination of international law specialists and anthropologists. In a multi-species entity like the Federation, which grows by peaceful negotiations with sovereign alien words, there would naturally be people specializing in this kind of thing.
There’s a word for someone who is a kind of combination of international law specialist and anthropologist, and who specialises in peaceful negotiations with other sovereign entities, though, and it isn’t “lawyer”, it’s “diplomat”…
the US Coast Guard does not, as far as I’m aware, routinely travel to previously undiscovered foreign countries.
A bold assertion. I hope you’re prepared to back it up.
ajay @31:
A bold assertion. I hope you’re prepared to back it up.
I will admit that the events described by S.M. Stirling in the Nantucket trilogy do appear to offer a counter-example. But I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that those aren’t really routine occurrences…
@@@@@ 5 – I was at a FanX (Salt Lake Comicon) panel last weekend with Melinda on it. (Star Trek, the optimistic future and why we need it.) One of the questions she was asked was how she came up with some of the ideas for “Measure of a Man”. She talked about the idea of artificial intelligence and was struggling with the writing. One of here friends, who was an officer in the Navy at the time, mentioned to her that in cases where the ship is at sea, when an officer is tried, the captain will always be the defender and the first officer/mate will be the prosecution, which set up the drama and debate between Picard and Riker. This let her finish the writing and gave us a great ST episode.
Regulations may have changed in the intervening years, but she did base it on regulations from the Navy, given that Starfleet is considered a military organization with corresponding structure
Granted a law department wouldn’t be much use in first contacts, you’d want diplomats or sociologists for that, but the Enterprise, any Enterprise, visits a lot of Federation planets and habitations where legal issues sometimes arise. Barrayaran military ship’s on convoy duty carry legal officers and one book is all about what happens when the legal officer isn’t consulted when issues arise. There would have been no story if Admiral Vorpatril had sent his lawyer to discuss the detention of some of his crew instead of a an armed rescue party.
With 1000+ crew on a 5 year mission, you might need a lawyer just to take care of family and domestic issues whic is a major portion of JAG practice.
@35/Roxana: I imagine that there are already lawyers on the Federation planets the Enterprise visits, so the Enterprise doesn’t have to bring them along.
janajansen @37:
I imagine that there are already lawyers on the Federation planets the Enterprise visits, so the Enterprise doesn’t have to bring them along.
Though there still might be some value to having a lawyer who was thoroughly up-to-date on the legal intricacies of starships and Starfleet-civilian interactions. It might be a problem to discover that the only lawyer on the planet willing to take your case specializes in local divorce and family law, rather than orbital collision liability…
@23: I wonder if the training of a lawyer in a 23rd century utopia might be rather different, though? Determination of relevant statutes and precedents seems like the kind of thing a computerised expert system ought to be quite good at, so I wonder if theirtraining might focus on analysis, argument and rhetoric, which are generalist skills that ought to be well developed in Starfleet Bridge officers.
@33 – ” One of here friends, who was an officer in the Navy at the time, mentioned to her that in cases where the ship is at sea, when an officer is tried, the captain will always be the defender and the first officer/mate will be the prosecution, which set up the drama and debate between Picard and Riker.”
Except that hasn’t been true for a hundred years.
@27,
Perhaps if Cook had somebody on board who could tell him that getting involved in a local legal dispute without knowing anything about the situation, he would not have decided to join the fight. A lawyer, like one of the USN’s current operational lawyers, could offer advice in a different, and more authorative way than Cook’s lieutenants.
@28,
The wording seemed to imply that those two classes were sufficient to make any Star Fleet Academy graduate equivalent to a lawyer.
swampyankee @41
Perhaps if Cook had somebody on board who could tell him that getting involved in a local legal dispute without knowing anything about the situation, he would not have decided to join the fight.
Though what happened wasn’t “a local legal dispute”. After some Hawaiians stole one of the ship’s longboats, Cook escalated things by attempted to kidnap the local king. (The idea apparently being to hold him hostage for the return of the longboat.) Cook was killed after he struck one of the high chiefs, who was attempting to rescue the king.
I really don’t think a lawyer (or an anthropologist, or a diplomat) was necessary to tell Cook that attempting to kidnap the local ruler was a dangerously stupid idea.
The wording seemed to imply that those two classes were sufficient to make any Star Fleet Academy graduate equivalent to a lawyer.
You’re quite right; I misparsed the “they are all of the officers” bit in that comment.
@42,
Thanks for the information about Cook’s death.
@33,
That hasn’t been the case for over 200 years inthe USN, even before the hangings of three sailors on the Somers before the US Civil War (see https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/s/somers-essay-on-legal-aspects-of-somers-affair.html)
Well it does seem a little odd that there is no lawyer or equivalent to a paralegal on the Enterprise. JAG lawyers go on sea duty right? If the ship has room for a pop culture historian or what ever job that guy shot in season 1 in the Dixon Hill episode there should be a lawyer somewhere. Not that Measure of A Man isn’t one of my all time favorite episodes. Kirk’s lawyer Coglin was a civilian wasn’t he? The Federation and Starfleet have lawyers just not aboard ships.
So that captains have relatively free reign to break the rules with no one able to override their commands, and have to explain it afterward. Think how often the captains of the ships we follow break the Prime Directive or Temporal Prime Directive. They seem to get away with it; it doesn’t even seem to affect their chances of promotion.
Presumably the admiralty later get together with experts – such as cultural researchers for cases of pre-warp contact – and decide whether the reason justified the breach. If there were a lawyer present and warning the captain that X is illegal, it’d be harder to waive their actions as grey areas where they had some leeway.
@46/la_beldam_sans_merci: The Prime Directive is a moral guideline. For a moral guideline grey areas are inevitable; that’s where the moral decisions are made. In such a situation, an ethics council would be a better help than a lawyer. This function is at least partially fulfilled by the senior officers, but it probably wouldn’t have hurt to strengthen their role.
And yes, Starship captains’ decisions are evaluated at a later time. When Kirk decides that he has the obligation to interfere in “The Apple”, Spock warns him that “Starfleet Command may think otherwise”, and Kirk answers: “I’ll take my chances.”
I like to think that he was reprimanded for his dubious actions in this episode.
My major problem with “Measure of a Man” was Picard’s lack of appropriate response to Riker’s use of Data’s kill switch as a (dubious at best) argument against his sentience. Had I been Data’s advocate, I certainly would have objected to an act of physical assault against my client, and had the magistrate upheld the action, I would have requested permission to phaser or hypospray Riker into unconsciousness, and, presenting this as equally valid evidence of Riker’s non-sentience, request he be removed as prosecutor. (And if another prosecutor was appointed, well, lather, rinse, repeat…)
coming back for an answer with a bit less levity: in short, it’s the flagship of the federation, travels on extended missions that last for weeks, months, years. there is slightly more than 1000 people on board, many of which are civilians. yes, there are lawyers on the enterprise; logic demands it. you have a mash of hundreds of species, cultures, customs and yes, laws to contend with. the real question is: “why don’t we see them?”. this isn’t a plot hole, but simply a combination of budget, natural limitations of television as a narrative medium, and the time it was made. while there are ~1K people on the enterprise, we routinely see about 10 of them. 7 in the “main” cast: picard, riker, geordi, data, worf, troi, dr. crusher. wesley was #8, but was replaced by “rotating ensign at the helm” until ro can along. o’brien and guinan were almost regulars (at least o’brien got shipped off to DS9 and a regular gig). so, in any episode, we are dealing with roughly 1% of the crew. that’s all we see, because they cannot show us the rest of the crew, unless there is a specific narrative need. for instance, there is an archaeology staff on board, but we only know about it cause one of them got killed off camera on an away mission to set up the premise of an episode. budget of a show dictates we cannot cast enough people regularly to have them play minor, recurring roles. an hour long episode dictates we cannot show everything that goes into how many people might actually be working on an issue, or going on an away mission (really, you send 4/5 people only? every time?). and yes, the need to have the audience emotionally invest in characters, so you cannot show them much beyond 10 regular characters. and, quite honestly, it is a product of the genre conventions of the time. people weren’t thinking (okay, as much) about these things in the late 80’s/early 90’s. we were still stuck in “future clothes are shiny/made of old drapes” mode.
it’s not a fun answer, but there it is. it’s not a question that keeps me up at night (what happens to all the replicated barware, however…that’s a mystery), because it’s unfortunately a functional one and rooted, alas, in the reality of presenting fictional stories on tv.
The lawyers are all part of Section 31
I always thought the best use of lawyers on Trek would be to interpret the Prime Directive. Although many people think it’s a simple “Thou shalt not…” it must in fact be extremely complex. Considering the large variations in cultures, and the many ways they can interact and be first contacted, it would be essential to have at least one person around highly versed in the law to recommend appropriate courses of action in perhaps unpredictable circumstances. In fact, I see this as a major department on the ship on the order of engineering or medical, and a member of it would be required on the majority of away missions.
@51/SargentCool: I agree that the Prime Directive isn’t a simple “Thou shalt not”, at least not in the 23rd century, but I don’t think it would be extremely complex, either. As I’ve said in comment #47, I see it as a moral guideline. The 1967 writers’ guide calls it “a wise but often troublesome rule”. A “wise rule” shouldn’t be too complex, or people will spend all the time obeying its letter and not enough time obeying its spirit.
It should also leave some leeway for the individual situations starships crews encounter. It’s vital knowledge for a starship’s first contact specialist, but I assume that everybody in Starfleet is a first contact specialist. Especially the captain and the senior staff.
I admit that when I first read the headline I misread it as “Why Doesn’t Starfleet Put The Lawyers On The Enterprise?”
As in, all the lawyers.
Golgafrincham style.
Or, perhaps, something similar to Space Seed. In the absence of its lawyers, the Federation flourishes towards utopia.
Many years later, the Enterprise returns to Ceti Alpha 6 to discover a colony entirely consisting of lawyers, obsessed with thoughts of revenge (or at least a massive class-action suit). And the scene is set for Star Trek II: Khan v. Federation.
@53/ajay: The missing link between Star Trek and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy! I want to watch that film.
The Ceti eel is just a misapplied Babel fish.
The Ceti eel is just a misapplied Babel fish.
“I need to put this fish in my ear, Mr Chekov, I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“Er you saying I khav an eccent, Keptin?”
@53 If you are using the Golgafrincham plan to insult a group of people, then can I suggest you missed the point of that sequence. Remember, after shipping off all the “useless” people, the Golgafrincham peoples left behind were wiped out by a disease which the “useless” people would have prevented.
Why don’t you see lawyers in the police force?
Because they prevent you from doing what you want to do. Act first, apologize later.
56: yes. I know. I’ve read the book,
@58 Then don’t get one of its explicit messages wrong, and try to perpetuate the myth that some people are just useless too.
@57,
There are lawyers in police forces, at least in larger forces in the US. First, they have general civil law issues, involving things like purchasing agreements, contracts, torts, and, second, they’ll need to tell the officers what the laws actually mean and what they need to do to keep from totally bollixing up a case from things like improperly handling evidence or collection of testimony. In addition, it’s not that uncommon for senior officers to have law degrees, even if they’ve never passed the bar exam.
So, what I’m taking from this is that, given her role and mission length, Enterprise (or any similar vessel) would carry quite a large legal department, mostly comprising generalists on Federation Law, but also specialists (who may be maultitasking in the previous category too) with knowledge/experience in the laws of the Federation member-states that are more likely to be encountered, family/probate, customs (and revenue), etc. The staff would most likely answer to the the equivalent of a District Attorney at a Starbase but would work under the general supervision/direction of the Captain (and XO). They would advise the senior staff, possibly/probably have a representative on the senior staff for mission briefings etc. (like an ADA). This ‘ADA’ would have some, limited authority to supercede or contradict the Captain in Federation (civil) matters, but not Starfleet ones.
Smaller vessels on single-role or limited-scope assignments may have a small Starfleet-Legal detachment, or may not have anybody with dedicated legal training on board as the Captain (and XO) are trained to deal with most issues arising, and all Starfleet personnel have at least some legal training, if not much more than how to complete your paperwork correctly (in triplicate) and why not to make contractual agreements of any kind with Ferengi.
Gods, but I’d have loved to have seen that in TNG and DS9. Oh Light! DS9! and Starfleet Captains think Temporal Investigations are a pain in their arse! Sisko should have been driven to an early grave by the Federation legal team that must have been sent to that station (Space is danger and darkness and death… accidents happen… I’m presuming…).
Hmm, maybe Orci could do that Starfleet JAG as one of his new shows (that untitled Picard show?)