Definition
In old English legal practice, close copies were copies of legal documents or court papers that could be written with as many words per sheet as the copyist chose — densely or loosely, at the writer's discretion. The term existed primarily in contrast to office copies, which were subject to a formal rule limiting the number of words permitted on each sheet.
The significance of the distinction was economic and procedural: court fees for copies were often calculated by the sheet, so the number of words permitted per sheet directly affected the cost of obtaining official copies of pleadings, orders, and other court documents. Office copies, governed by a fixed word-count per sheet, produced a predictable (and often inflated) fee. Close copies, free of that constraint, could be written more compactly.
Common Confusion
CLOSE COPIES vs. OFFICE COPIES: These two terms are mirror images and have no meaning in isolation. A researcher encountering "close copies" in an old English practice text must understand the office copy regime to grasp why the distinction mattered. The issue was not document security or authenticity — both types were legitimate copies — but the formal word-count rule that governed official copies produced through the court's own channels.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of old English practice with no surviving operational significance in modern law. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century English procedural sources, practice manuals, and reports dealing with court administration, fees, and the regulation of clerks and officers.
The primary trap is reading "close" in its modern spatial sense (a tightly held document, a sealed record) rather than its older typographical sense (written close together, densely packed). A researcher unfamiliar with the word-count fee system of English practice courts may misread passages contrasting close copies and office copies as referring to document confidentiality or access restrictions — an entirely different legal concept.
The Burrill citation to 2 Burr. 1177-1181 and 1 W. Bl. 288 points to eighteenth-century King's Bench authority. Those reports date to the era of Lord Mansfield and confirm that the close/office copy distinction was a live procedural issue at that time, not merely an antiquarian curiosity.
For Law Mind corpus researchers working in English legal history, colonial American practice (which drew heavily on English procedure), or early American court records, close copies may appear without explanation in contexts discussing the costs of litigation or the duties of court clerks. The relevant frame is not evidence law or records management — it is court administration and fee regulation.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four shelf sources are in close agreement, which reflects how narrow and settled the meaning was. Black's, Bouvier's, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Burrill's all define close copies by reference to the same contrast: unrestricted word count per sheet, as opposed to the prescribed limit governing office copies.
Burrill's is the most precise, adding the qualifier "old English practice" and supplying the only case citations in the group (2 Burr. 1177 and 1 W. Bl. 288), which remain useful anchors for historical research. Rapalje & Lawrence also labels this "old practice," signaling that even by the time of their writing the term was historical rather than current. Black's and Bouvier's omit citations and treat the term descriptively.
No shelf source explains the underlying fee structure in detail, which is the context that gives the distinction its practical meaning. Researchers needing to understand why the word-count rule existed — and how it was abused — will need to consult broader histories of English court administration rather than any of the four dictionaries.
None of the sources suggest any American doctrinal development of the term. It appears to have remained a term of English practice and to have faded with the procedural reforms of the nineteenth century, including the English Judicature Acts, which rationalized court fees and clerk functions.