Definition
"Mem" is a scribal and typographic abbreviation used in legal manuscripts, digests, and reports to signal a memorandum — a note inserted by an editor, reporter, or scrivener to record a procedural event, an exception, or an observation not formally part of the judgment or pleading. In older English legal reports, "mem." appears in the margin or body of a text to introduce a recorder's note drawing the reader's attention to something worth remembering or flagging for later reference.
The term is distinct from memorandum as a standalone legal instrument. When appearing as an abbreviation in law reports, it functions as a directive annotation: roughly equivalent to "note well" or "take notice of the following." It may introduce a statement about the procedural posture of a case, a correction to an earlier entry, or an observation about custom or practice that fell outside the formal record.
Common Confusion
"Mem." as a reporter's or scrivener's annotation should not be confused with memorandum as a formal legal instrument (a written record of terms agreed upon, a diplomatic communication, or an office document stating facts and conclusions). The abbreviation in law reports is editorial; the instrument called a memorandum is operative or quasi-operative. Researchers importing twentieth-century understandings of "memo" — meaning an internal office communication — into readings of early modern legal reports will misread the annotation's function entirely.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English case reporters — Year Books, Plowden, Coke's Reports, or the various nominate reporters collected in the English Reports — will encounter "mem." as a recurrent marginal or inline notation. Its appearance signals that what follows is the reporter's own gloss, not a court's ruling. This distinction is critical: the substantive law in a report and the reporter's mem. notes carry different authority, and conflating them can distort analysis of what a case actually held.
In manuscript records (plea rolls, chancery proceedings, borough records), "mem." at the head of an entry typically introduces a new item on the roll — a formulaic usage inherited from Latin record-keeping conventions where "memorandum" opened a fresh entry to show that the court or officer took formal notice of what followed. Researchers consulting digitized archival records must recognize this usage to parse document structure correctly.
The abbreviation also appears in private legal instruments — conveyancing precedents, attorneys' office books, and ledgers — where it marks a draftsman's side-note to himself or to a supervising solicitor. These notations were not meant for the instrument itself and may appear in drafts but not in executed copies; when they do appear in executed instruments, they raise questions about whether the note was intended as operative language.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary does not contain a standalone entry for "mem" as a term of art. The source material associated with this entry in the Burrill corpus is drawn from entries covering maxims beginning with "meli-" — specifically, maxims concerning the comparative strength of a possessor's position and the rule limiting a minor's capacity to worsen his own condition. These maxims appear on the same folio page and were apparently captured together with any "mem." notation that may have introduced or separated them in the original text.
This absence is itself informative. Burrill, like most nineteenth-century American law dictionaries, treated "mem." as too obvious an abbreviation to require a dedicated entry — a reflection of how deeply embedded the usage was in legal culture. Its meaning was assumed. Modern researchers lack that assumed familiarity, which is precisely why the abbreviation can mislead.
No substantive divergence among historical dictionaries exists on this term because virtually none treated it as a dictionary entry. The practical guidance, therefore, comes from understanding the documentary contexts in which it appears rather than from lexicographic authority.