Definition
Del consail (Law French: "of counsel") is an archaic Law French phrase designating a person who serves in the capacity of counsel — that is, as an adviser or legal representative in a proceeding or transaction. The phrase identifies the role or status of an attorney, serjeant, or legal adviser acting on behalf of a party.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering del consail in early common law sources — particularly Year Book materials from the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries — should recognize it as a functional status marker, not a term of art with independent doctrinal content. It signals that the person so described is appearing or acting in an advisory or representational capacity rather than as a party, witness, or judge.
The phrase appears most frequently in Year Book reports, where the procedural posture of counsel was legally significant. In that era, the role of counsel was formally distinct from the role of attorney, and sources may use del consail to mark a serjeant or apprentice-at-law operating in a particular capacity. Researchers should not assume the term maps cleanly onto the modern concept of "attorney of record" or "counsel of record." The institutional and procedural context is different, and collapsing del consail into modern attorney-client or representation concepts risks anachronism.
Because the phrase is Law French, it will appear in pre-1650 English legal sources with some frequency but is essentially absent from later common law materials. Researchers working in digitized Year Book corpora should note variant spellings and abbreviations; Law French orthography was inconsistent, and del consail may appear in contracted or altered forms depending on the manuscript tradition or printed edition being consulted.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the definition "of counsel" with a single citation to the Year Books, specifically Yearb. P. 11 Hen. VI. 1 — a Year Book from the reign of Henry VI (early fifteenth century). Burrill offers no elaboration beyond the translation and the citation, which is characteristic of his treatment of Law French terms of limited doctrinal weight. The brevity reflects the phrase's function: it is a relational descriptor, not a concept requiring extended exposition.
Historical dictionaries generally do not diverge on this term because there is little to contest — the translation is unambiguous. What historical sources collectively underserve is context: they do not explain how del consail operated within the specific procedural culture of the Year Book period, how it related to the serjeant-apprentice structure of the medieval bar, or how it would eventually give way to the English vocabulary of "counsel," "barrister," and "solicitor" that displaced Law French usage after the seventeenth century.
Jurisdictional Note
Del consail is a historical English common law term with no current jurisdictional application. It is relevant only as a research artifact in English legal history sources and the materials derived from them.