Definition
Pro consilio impenso (Latin: "for counsel given") is a phrase appearing in early common law instruments and pleadings to express the consideration underlying a grant, promise, or obligation. When a grantor conveyed property or undertook a duty in exchange for legal or practical advice rendered by the recipient, the instrument would recite this phrase to identify that professional service as the operative consideration. The fuller form — pro consilio suo, et auxilio, et labore in negotiis suis agendis impens' et impendend' — extends the scope to encompass not only counsel already given but also aid and labor bestowed and to be bestowed in conducting the grantor's affairs, capturing both past and prospective services.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a formula of consideration, not a substantive cause of action. Researchers encountering it in Year Book entries, early plea rolls, or medieval conveyancing instruments should read it as the recital clause that answers the legal question of why the grantor was bound. Its significance lies in demonstrating that professional services — advice, agency, legal representation — could constitute good and sufficient consideration for a grant or covenant well before the modern law of contract fully systematized the doctrine of consideration.
Two research traps are worth flagging. First, the phrase appears in abbreviated Latin in manuscript sources (impens' for impensa/impensis), and transcriptions in printed Year Book editions vary; a researcher should not assume the abbreviated form alters the legal meaning. Second, the extension "et impendend'" (and to be bestowed) signals that the consideration was partly executory — services yet to be rendered — which implicates early debates about whether executory consideration could ground a binding obligation. Researchers tracing the history of executory consideration and the development of assumpsit will find instruments using this formula as evidentiary material for that doctrinal evolution.
Because the phrase spans both past and future services, it also intersects with questions of retainer arrangements and the legal relationship between counsel and client in the medieval and early modern periods. Corpus researchers working on the history of the legal profession, fee arrangements, or the attorney-client relationship may encounter it as evidence of how professional engagements were memorialized.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the principal English-language source for this term and provides the two key forms: the bare phrase pro consilio impenso sourced to Dyer 65a, and the expanded formula sourced to the Year Books of Trinity Term, 10 Edward III (1336). Burrill does not analyze the doctrine; he records the phrase as a translation aid for researchers reading Latin legal texts, which was the characteristic function of mid-nineteenth-century law dictionaries of this type.
The Dyer reference places the phrase in the mid-sixteenth century court reports, confirming that the formula persisted from the Year Book period through the early common law reports. Burrill does not flag the executory dimension of the extended form ("et impendend'"), which is in fact the more legally interesting element. Modern historical dictionaries and legal Latin glossaries largely omit this phrase entirely, treating it as too specialized for general coverage. Researchers should therefore not expect secondary dictionary support beyond Burrill and Latin legal glossaries; primary sources — the Year Books, Dyer's reports, and early plea rolls — are the necessary materials.
Jurisdictional Note
This phrase belongs exclusively to the English common law tradition and its early American reception. It does not appear as a live term of art in modern American, English, or Commonwealth practice; it is encountered only in historical documents and in scholarship on medieval and early modern legal history.