In seine offices about the royal person the principal officer of the department is distinguished by the appellation of serjeant, as the serjeanteurgeon, serjeant-painter, &c.
Many of the documents referred to in the prevent article are printed at length in the Appendix to 3Ianning's Servicns ad Legem,' which is a report of the argument before the Privy Council in 1839.
Serjeants and other counsel are engaged to assist a party in a cause either by the delivery of a brief in that cause or by giving a retainer or retaining fee. A retainer, if for a particular cause, or for a particular stage of that cause, is called a common retainer, and it now consists in the payment of the sum of one guinea and the delivering of a paper endorsed with the name of the cause and of the court, and the words " Mr. Serjeant A (or ` 3Ir. B'), retainer for the plaintiff" (or for the defendant). A general retainer is where a retaining fee of five guineas is given to counsel to engage the assistance of that counsel in all causes in which the party retaining may be concerned in the courts which the counsel retained attends. A special retainer is where a large fee is given to counsel to plead in a particular cause on a circuit on which he does not usually practise. This fee is given and received partly with a view to remunerate the counsel for the inconvenience of leaving other engagements to come to a strange circuit, and partly for the purpose of preventing any unnecessary interference with the business of the regular practitioners of the particular court into which he is brought, in cases which are not of great importance. Both the common and the special retainer amount to an engagement on the part of the counsel to accept the brief of the party retaining, and to refuse any brief offered by the adverse party, and on the part of the client, to deliver a brief to the counsel retained in case the cause is entered for trial, whether a trial takes place or not. A general retainer merely
renders It imperative on the counsel retained to accept no brief or retainer from the adversary of the party retaining, until he has first ascertained that it is not the intention of the latter to require his services in the particular cause. The general retainer continues in force during the joint lives of the retaining client and the counsel retained, miless the engagement be cancelled by the former, who is at liberty at any time to renounce his title to the services of the counsel retained. In the case of a common or a special retainer, the contract can be put an end to only by the concurrent act of counsel and client.
In caste of importance, counsel arc generally retained before the action is actually commenced ; and it often happens that for want of sufficient information as to the form of the intended proceedings, or from carelessness, the cause is not described in the retainer with suffi cient accuracy. When this is the case, the retainer is void, and the counsel is bound to accept the retainer of the adverse party, if ten dered before the mistake has been corrected. The sufficiency of the first retainer becomes frequently the subject of dispute between the litigant parties, which dispute, if not arranged between themselves, Is generally settled not by the counsel to whom the retainer is given, but by some other leading counsel.
In former times it was usual, particularly for great persons and public bodies, especially for religious corporations, to grant annuities pro consilio impenso vel impendendo.