Burden American lawyer with old brief in recess? (4)
I believe the answer is:
load
'burden' is the definition.
(I know that burden can be written as load)
'american lawyer with old brief in recess?' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'american' could be 'a' (common abbreviation - e.g. in organisation names) and 'a' is present in the answer.
an anagram of 'old' is 'lod' which is within the left over letters.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for load that I've seen before include "pack" , "Weight, source of pressure" , "Goods carried by a large vehicle" , "Amount" , "Cargo - burden" .)