Definition
En apres is a Law French adverbial phrase meaning "hereafter," "afterwards," or "thereafter." It appears in older legal instruments, pleadings, and records to signal that what follows in the text refers to a subsequent time, event, or provision — functioning as a temporal connector within a document or proceeding.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is navigational rather than substantive. Researchers encounter en apres primarily in transcriptions or reprints of medieval and early modern English legal records, year books, and plea rolls where Law French remained the dominant professional language. Its significance is positional: the phrase marks a transition in the document's timeline, and misreading or overlooking it can cause a researcher to misattribute which events or obligations are being described as prior versus subsequent.
The chief research trap is treating en apres as a term of legal art with independent doctrinal weight. It carries none. It is a connective phrase, not a term that defines a right, remedy, or procedural category. Researchers parsing historical pleadings should treat it the way they would treat "thereafter" in a modern instrument — noting the temporal sequencing it establishes rather than searching for a substantive legal rule attached to the phrase itself.
Because Law French fell out of active professional use in England following the language reforms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (and was never a working legal language in American courts), en apres appears almost exclusively in historical sources. It will not be found in modern statutes, regulations, or judicial opinions. Researchers working in post-1700 materials who encounter the phrase are almost certainly reading a quotation from or commentary on an older source.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary gives the definition concisely: "Hereafter; afterwards," with attribution to a Law French dictionary source. Burrill offers no further doctrinal elaboration, which is itself informative — the phrase warranted dictionary inclusion as a translation aid for readers of historical records rather than as a term requiring legal analysis.
No substantive divergence across historical sources is expected here; the phrase is philological rather than doctrinal, and its meaning is stable. Historical dictionaries that cover Law French generally (such as those by Kelham or Tomlins) address comparable adverbial connectors from the same tradition.