Definition
A Law French term from old English law meaning an attorney — a person appointed or authorized to act in the place of another in legal proceedings or affairs. The term is the direct ancestor of the modern English word "attorney" and appears in early legal records and texts written in Law French, the professional language of English courts from roughly the Norman Conquest through the seventeenth century.
ATTORNE is not a term of active modern legal use. It survives only in historical sources and is encountered primarily when reading medieval English legal materials in their original or near-original form.
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Common Confusion
ATTORNE, ATTORNEY, and ATTORNMENT are related but distinct terms sharing a common root. ATTORNE is the archaic Law French noun for the person acting as representative. ATTORNEY is its anglicized descendant, now the standard term for a licensed legal representative. ATTORNMENT is a separate legal concept referring to a tenant's formal acknowledgment of a new landlord — a different legal operation entirely, though etymologically connected. Researchers encountering ATTORNE in a historical document should not assume it carries the more specific meaning of ATTORNMENT.
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Why It Matters in Research
The primary research value of ATTORNE is as a linguistic key. Encountering this term in a primary source signals that the document is either written in Law French or is a close translation of one — which places it almost certainly in English legal materials predating the seventeenth century. The Proceedings in Courts of Justice Act 1730 formally ended the use of Law French in English courts, so ATTORNE in an undated document is a reliable indicator of early provenance.
Researchers using the Law Mind corpus should be alert to two navigational points. First, sources that use ATTORNE rather than ATTORNEY are operating in a period when the role of legal representative was less formally regulated than it later became. The procedural rights, duties, and limitations attached to the office of attorney in that era differ substantially from modern professional norms. Second, the single citation shared by all three source dictionaries — Britton, chapter 126 — points to one of the earliest systematic treatises on English law, written in Law French and attributed to the reign of Edward I (late thirteenth century). A researcher tracing the history of the attorney's role in English procedure would need to engage Britton directly, not rely on these dictionary entries as more than a pointer.
The uniform brevity and identical wording across all three dictionary entries (Black's 1st, Black's 2nd, and Burrill's) suggests that later lexicographers simply carried forward the entry without independent research. This is a common pattern in historical legal dictionaries for archaic Law French terms and should caution researchers against treating the cumulative repetition as corroboration of anything beyond the basic equivalence stated.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary — give identical entries: "L. Fr. In old English law. An attorney. Britt. c. 126." There is no divergence, elaboration, or independent analysis among them. The shared citation to Britton chapter 126 is the sole substantive anchor.
Britton is a genuine thirteenth-century treatise, written in Anglo-Norman French and one of the foundational texts of early English common law. Its citation here is authentic. However, these dictionary entries offer no discussion of how ATTORNE functioned procedurally, what authority the attorne held, how appointment was made, or how the role compared to the contemporary ESSOINER or PROCTOR. Researchers needing that context must go directly to Britton or to secondary scholarship on medieval English legal procedure. The dictionary record for this term is a label, not an analysis.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Attorney (Historical Development); Law French in English Legal Sources.
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