Definition
Pro bono et malo is a Latin phrase meaning "for good and ill" or "for advantage and detriment." In legal usage, it describes a submission, undertaking, or situation that binds a party to accept both the favorable and the unfavorable consequences of a given act, decision, or condition — without the ability to accept one side while rejecting the other. The phrase captures the principle that a party cannot selectively claim the benefits of a legal position while disclaiming its burdens.
The phrase appears most often in the context of submissions to arbitration or judicial determination, where a party submitting a matter pro bono et malo agrees in advance to be bound by whatever outcome results, whether it proves advantageous or not.
Common Confusion
Pro bono et malo is occasionally conflated with the more familiar phrase pro bono publico ("for the public good"), which has a wholly different meaning in modern legal practice — most commonly, legal services rendered without charge for the benefit of the public or indigent clients. The two phrases share only the words "pro bono." A researcher encountering "pro bono" in older legal texts should confirm which phrase is actually used, as abbreviation or loose transcription can obscure the distinction.
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase belongs to a cluster of Latin maxims that appear with some regularity in older English common law materials — particularly in records concerning arbitration, submission bonds, and plea practice — but which largely vanish from American legal writing by the late nineteenth century. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century case law, chancery records, or treatises on arbitration and submission may encounter it embedded in procedural discussions without explanation, as contemporaneous legal writers assumed reader familiarity with the Latin.
The phrase's significance lies in its function: it signals an unconditional submission. When a historical source records that a party submitted a matter pro bono et malo, that is substantive information about the scope and finality of the submission, not mere ornament. Treating it as boilerplate risks missing a meaningful term of art.
Researchers should also be alert to abbreviated or paraphrased versions in older records. Scribes and reporters sometimes rendered the phrase partially or substituted near-synonyms, which can complicate keyword searching in digitized corpus materials. Cross-referencing with related phrases governing submission and arbitration — particularly those addressing the binding character of an award — will often recover relevant context.
Because this is a phrase drawn from procedural and arbitration practice, it connects thematically to the Law Mind corpus materials on submission to arbitration, plea bargaining history, and the evolution of finality doctrines, even where the precise Latin phrase does not recur in later sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's Law Dictionary and the Second Edition supplement offer identical, terse glosses: "For good and ill; for advantage and detriment." This consistency confirms that the phrase carried a stable, uncontested meaning across the relevant period of Black's coverage. Neither edition elaborates on procedural context or provides illustrative authority, which is characteristic of how Black's treated Latin maxims of this kind — as self-evident to the trained reader of the era.
The brevity of the historical dictionary treatment reflects the phrase's status as received Latin rather than a contested or evolving term. No divergence between the two sources requires reconciliation. What the historical dictionaries do not provide — and what researchers need — is the doctrinal setting in which the phrase operated. That gap must be filled by consulting primary sources in arbitration and submission practice rather than relying on dictionary coverage alone.