Definition
A client is a person who employs, retains, or consults an attorney or other legal professional to act on their behalf — whether in litigation, advisory work, transactional matters, or any other legal business. The relationship is defined not merely by payment or formal engagement, but by the reasonable expectation that the attorney is acting in the person's legal interest. That expectation, once formed, triggers professional duties including confidentiality, loyalty, and competent representation.
The term extends beyond active litigation. A person who consults an attorney for legal advice — even without filing suit, signing a retainer, or paying a fee — may qualify as a client for purposes of professional responsibility rules and privilege protections.
In organizational contexts, identifying the "client" becomes structurally important and non-obvious. When an attorney represents a corporation, the client is the entity itself, not its officers, directors, shareholders, or employees individually. This distinction governs who controls the privilege, who can waive it, and to whom the attorney's loyalty runs.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A customer, buyer, or receiver of goods or services; a person who receives help or services from a professional such as a lawyer or accountant.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who consults a legal adviser, or submits his cause to his management; also, more broadly, a dependent under the protection of a patron.
The common and legal senses largely overlap for individual representations, but the overlap masks a critical legal distinction: not every person who pays an attorney is a client in the professional-responsibility sense, and conversely, a person who has never paid — or even signed an agreement — may already be one. The legal definition turns on reasonable reliance and the formation of a professional relationship, not on the commercial transaction that common usage implies.
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Common Confusion
CLIENT vs. PROSPECTIVE CLIENT: A person who consults an attorney but does not ultimately retain them occupies a distinct status — the prospective client — recognized in modern professional responsibility rules. Confidences shared during an initial consultation receive protection even if no engagement follows. Historical dictionaries do not account for this category; researchers relying on older sources may incorrectly assume client status requires a completed retention.
CLIENT vs. THIRD-PARTY PAYOR: The person who pays the attorney is not necessarily the client. An insurer funding a policyholder's defense, or a parent retaining counsel for a child, may direct payment without becoming the client. The attorney's duties run to the client, and that distinction can become outcome-determinative in conflict and privilege disputes.
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Why It Matters in Research
The definition of "client" is the threshold question for attorney-client privilege analysis, conflict-of-interest determinations, and professional discipline proceedings. Getting it wrong cascades through every downstream inquiry.
Researchers using historical sources should be aware of several traps. First, early definitions uniformly emphasize employment and retention — a formal, transactional framing. Modern doctrine, codified in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct and their state equivalents, recognizes client status arising from reasonable belief alone, without formal agreement. A 19th-century dictionary entry will not capture this shift.
Second, the corporate client problem is entirely absent from the historical dictionary literature. Bouvier, Black, and Anderson all describe the client as an individual person. Researchers working on privilege questions involving organizational clients — which now dominate commercial litigation — must look beyond these sources entirely.
Third, the scope of "legal business" has expanded considerably. Historical definitions center on courts and litigation management. Modern client relationships encompass regulatory advice, transactional work, compliance counseling, and internal investigations, each of which generates its own privilege and conflict considerations.
For corpus researchers, the term "client" functions as a gateway to the attorney-client privilege entries (civpro_157 and civpro_158) and to the corporate counsel material in business_57. Questions about who the client is in a given representation almost always precede — and shape — questions about whether the privilege applies or has been waived.
Jurisdictional variation in the definition of "prospective client" and in the duties owed during preliminary consultations can affect research into legal malpractice claims and disqualification motions. State-level professional responsibility rules track the Model Rules with varying modifications.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries converge on a shared core: a client is a person who employs or retains an attorney to appear in courts, advise, and manage legal proceedings. Black's (both editions), Bouvier's, and Anderson's are functionally identical on this point. Burrill adds the Latin derivation (cliens) and the early French usage from Britton, useful context for tracing how the term entered English legal vocabulary.
Anderson's makes a substantive addition absent from the others: the client "is responsible to [the attorney] for his fees, and to whom the attorney is responsible for the management of the suit." This bilateral framing — mutual obligations running both ways — is more analytically useful than the purely unilateral employment framing in the other sources.
Black's 2nd Edition cites three Mississippi and New York cases to anchor the definition, none of which have been located as essential to the modern doctrine but which confirm the term was litigated in the 19th century primarily in the context of attorney fee disputes and authority questions.
What all historical sources miss: the prospective client, the organizational client, the implied client relationship, and any concept of the client as the privilege-holder rather than merely the retaining party. These are not minor omissions; they represent the center of gravity of contemporary legal practice. Researchers should treat the historical definitions as accurate for their era and insufficient for modern doctrine.
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Jurisdictional Note
The definition of "client" for professional responsibility purposes is governed by state rules, nearly all of which follow the Model Rules of Professional Conduct with local modifications. The critical jurisdictional variation lies in the treatment of prospective clients and the duties owed during preliminary consultations — some states impose stronger confidentiality obligations at that stage than the Model Rules baseline. Corporate client doctrine is substantially uniform across U.S. jurisdictions following the Supreme Court's treatment of the subject.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
civpro_157: Attorney-Client Privilege — Scope, Duration, and Corporate Clients (The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia)
civpro_158: Attorney-Client Privilege — Waiver, Inadvertent Disclosure, and Rule 502 (The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia)
business_57: Board of Directors — Role of Corporate Counsel and Attorney-Client Privilege (The Law Mind Business Organizations & Corporate Law Encyclopedia)
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