Lobbying in the United States

Lobbying is a paid activity in which advocacy groups hire well-connected professional advocates, often lawyers, to argue for specific legislation in decision-making bodies such as the United States Congress. It is often perceived negatively by journalists and the American public; critics consider it to be a form of bribery, influence peddling, or extortion and lobbying was illegal in the United States in the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries.

Source: Wikipedia — Lobbying in the United States (CC BY-SA 4.0)