Definition
Per attornatum (Latin: "by attorney") is an obsolete writ of English common law that directed justices in eyre to permit a person in the king's service to appear and prosecute or defend a claim through an appointed attorney rather than in person. Because the individual was engaged in royal service and therefore unable to attend court personally, the writ functioned as a royal dispensation, allowing substitute representation where the common law otherwise presumed or required personal appearance.
The writ was addressed to the itinerant justices (justices in eyre) who traveled circuits to hear pleas, and it commanded them to receive the claimant's appearance through an attorney as legally sufficient. Without such authorization, a party's failure to appear in person could result in default or dismissal.
Why It Matters in Research
Per attornatum is significant not for its direct modern application — it has none — but for what it illuminates about the historical development of the right to appear by attorney. Researchers working in early common law sources, Year Books, or treatises on the origins of the legal profession will encounter this writ as evidence that attorney representation was once an exceptional privilege requiring royal sanction rather than a routine right.
The writ belongs to a cluster of early procedural instruments — related to writs of protection and writs of attorney — that governed who could act as a legal representative and under what circumstances. Researchers conflating these instruments will misread the procedural posture of early cases. The per attornatum writ is specifically tied to royal service as the qualifying condition; it is not a general grant of leave to appear by counsel.
Because the writ appears primarily in Registers of Original Writs (Registrum Brevium) and early procedural treatises, researchers searching case law reporters will not find it there. Its paper trail runs through the Register of Writs and administrative records, not reported decisions. The citation to Reg. Orig. 19 in Black's points directly to the Register of Original Writs, which is a chancery compilation, not a court report.
For historians of the legal profession, this term is a data point in the larger story of how attorney representation evolved from royal dispensation to universal right — a transition that was substantially complete by the time Blackstone wrote, which is why Blackstone's Commentaries give it no significant treatment.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides the only dictionary treatment in the Law Mind corpus: "An ancient writ by which the king commanded the justices in eyre to admit the claim by attorney of a person who was in the royal service, and could not appear in person." Black's cites Reg. Orig. 19, the Register of Original Writs, as its authority. The definition is brief but accurate in framing the writ as a mechanism of royal command rather than a general procedural right.
No other dictionary in the Law Mind shelf — not Bouvier, not Burrill, not Abbott — appears to carry a separate entry for this term. This is consistent with its status as a highly specific historical writ of narrow scope. The term had fallen out of practical relevance well before the American legal tradition took shape, which accounts for its absence from American-origin legal dictionaries.
What the historical sources collectively leave unaddressed is the relationship between per attornatum and related instruments — the writ of protection (which similarly excused royal servants from attendance) and writs of general attorney (which appointed representatives without the royal service condition). Researchers should consult Maitland's work on the forms of action and early Inns of Court scholarship to situate per attornatum within that broader procedural family.
Jurisdictional Note
Per attornatum was an exclusively English writ with no reception into American law. American courts never operated under justices in eyre, and the premise of the writ — royal command to royal judicial officers — had no counterpart in the colonial or post-independence American legal structure. The term appears in American legal dictionaries as a matter of historical record only.