Attorney given thanks for the facts (4)
I believe the answer is:
data
'the facts' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'attorney given thanks' is the wordplay.
'attorney' becomes 'da' (District Attorney).
'given' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'thanks' becomes 'ta' (UK informal version of 'thank you').
'da'+'ta'='DATA'
'for' is the link.
(Other definitions for data that I've seen before include "Computer info" , "What's stored by computers" , "intelligence" , "Facts and figures as processed by computer" , "Collected information" .)