Definition
To instruct, in legal usage, carries three related but distinct meanings depending on context:
1. Client to attorney. A client instructs an attorney when they convey the facts of their matter, authorize representation, and direct how the attorney should proceed on their behalf. This is the foundational act by which an attorney-client relationship becomes active and operative. Without instructions, a lawyer has no authority to act.
2. Attorney to counsel. In legal systems that distinguish between solicitors and barristers (or between retained attorneys and trial counsel), an attorney instructs counsel by briefing them on the case and authorizing them to appear and advocate. The term carries a formal weight in this context: to instruct counsel is to formally engage them for a matter.
3. Court to jury. A judge instructs the jury when giving the legal directions that govern deliberation — explaining what the law requires, what elements must be proven, and how the jury should evaluate the evidence before it. These instructions (or "jury instructions") are a distinct and consequential procedural event.
A fourth usage, present in administrative and agency law, refers to the directions given by a principal to an agent governing the conduct of the agent's duties — closer in character to a command within an established relationship than to the client-attorney usage.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To teach by giving instructions; to tell someone what they must or should do; to give one's own lawyer legal instructions as to how they should act in relation to a particular issue, thereby formally appointing them as one's own legal representative.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Arranged; furnished; provided [Obs.]; Instructed; taught; enlightened [Obs.].
The common and legal meanings share a general directional sense — one person conveying binding or authoritative guidance to another. The gap lies in formality and consequence. In everyday use, to instruct is simply to tell or teach. In legal use, the act of instructing a lawyer formally creates or activates a representational relationship with legal obligations attached. Similarly, a judge instructing a jury is not merely explaining — it is a procedural act whose accuracy or deficiency can be reviewed on appeal and can determine the validity of a verdict.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Jury Instructions: Directions given by the court to the jury on applicable law. May be general (burden of proof, reasonable doubt) or specific (elements of a charged offense or civil claim). Pattern instructions — pre-approved model charges — are widely used and distinguished from bespoke charges drafted for a particular case.
Instructions to Counsel: In systems with a divided legal profession, the formal brief or direction from a solicitor to a barrister authorizing appearance and advocacy. The written document transmitting those directions is called a brief.
Agency Instructions: Directions from a principal to an agent specifying how the agent is to conduct business on the principal's behalf. Distinguished from regulations in administrative law, which have general applicability, as opposed to instructions, which govern a particular officer's or agent's conduct.
Why It Matters in Research
The term's ambiguity across contexts creates real research hazards. A search for "instruct" or "instructions" in a historical corpus will surface three largely separate bodies of doctrine — jury instruction law, solicitor-barrister instruction practice, and agency/administrative direction — without obvious signals as to which is meant. Context must do the sorting work.
In jury instruction research specifically, the vocabulary has evolved. Older sources use "charge to the jury" interchangeably with "instructions to the jury," and some historical materials use "direct" or "direction" where modern usage says "instruct." A researcher working in 19th-century American or English sources should treat these as functional synonyms and search accordingly.
The client-instructs-attorney usage is most visible in British Commonwealth materials and in older American practice. Modern American legal writing more often uses "retain," "engage," or "authorize" rather than "instruct" for this relationship, so historical American sources may use the term in ways that look unfamiliar against a contemporary background.
The administrative law usage — instructions to officers distinguished from regulations — surfaces in statutory construction disputes and agency authority cases. Anderson's note about the distinction drawn in the Revised Statutes between "instructions" and "regulations" is a practical warning: these terms were not always used interchangeably, and courts have sometimes turned on that distinction.
For products liability researchers, "instructions" in the failure-to-warn context refers to the directions accompanying a product — a different register entirely, governed by negligence and strict liability doctrine rather than procedure or representation.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's first and second editions are nearly identical on this term, defining it across the same three functions: conveying information from client to attorney, authorizing counsel to appear, and charging the jury. The stability of the entry across editions suggests the core procedural meaning was settled early and remained consistent through the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Anderson's Dictionary adds meaningful texture by identifying the agent-instruction usage and flagging the statutory distinction between instructions and regulations — a nuance neither Black's edition addresses. This is a genuine point of supplementation: Black's is oriented toward the courtroom and attorney-client relationship, while Anderson's captures the administrative and agency dimension that becomes increasingly important in regulatory research.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is the modern jury instruction as a formal, often codified or patterned procedural artifact. All three sources treat the jury charge as a single act of judicial communication. Contemporary practice — with pattern instructions, mandatory charging conferences, and appellate standards of review for instructional error — represents a significant elaboration that none of these historical sources anticipates.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Jury Trial — Empanelment, Instructions, and Deliberation (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)
Closing Arguments, Jury Instructions, and Verdict (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)
Products Liability — Failure to Warn (Inadequate Warnings and Instructions) (The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia)