If learning legal terminology were as simple as memorizing words, all you would need is a dictionary. But, merely memorizing definitions takes inordinate time, hard work, and in the end, still teaches you little about comprehending and retaining this new language. If you understand the nature of the legal terms and how they equate to ordinary legal situations, you will learn the terminology in a faster and more engaging way, and most importantly retain that knowledge far longer. Such learning requires the following strategies: charts comparing words whenever two terms have confusing similarities, organizing words under common legal concepts, and including interesting supplementary material (such as how attorneys evaluate an automobile case to determine how much it is worth, or who gets to keep the wedding ring if the marriage is called off). Cumulatively these learning strategies make legal terminology come alive. The purpose of learning legal terms is not for you to memorize the words for a test and forget them two days later. Rather, it is the ability to study the words in proper context so that you have a deep and sustainable understanding of the terms five years later. The goal of this book is to make learning more obtainable, and to create a platform for long-term recall for court reporters, paralegals, and anyone who wishes to understand legal terminology. As B. M. Dickey, Chair of Court Reporting for one of the Community Colleges said: "Infrequently you run across a truly superior textbook, that makes the teacher's job much easier, and is so naturally suited to the students and their needs, that you can't wait to tell others about your find. Legal Terminology and Theory for Court Reporters and Paralegals by Ted H. Gordon is just such a book. It is well written, comprehensive, logically organized, and extremely well received by students."

Legal Terminology offers clear definitions, examples, and summaries. A wealth of engaging exercises reinforce learning and relate new terms and concepts to real life — making it ideal for any introductory course.

For Legal Secretarial, Paralegal, Legal Assistant, Business Science, Criminal Justice, and Court Reporting programs; also appropriate undergraduate college-level courses in Business Law, Legal Transcription, Law Office Procedures, Introduction to Paralegal, Legal Research, Legal Writing, Legal Systems, Government and the Law, Legal Environment of Business, Computers and the Law, and Legal Word Processing. Structured into short, easily digested chapters, Legal Terminology presents the fundamentals of the principal areas of the law, intermingling legal terms with their definitions and pronunciations. This text/workbook includes numerous student activities that assist instructors in teaching students to work with legal terminology; attention-getting motivational devices (including cartoons, graphics from the Library of Congress, and the "Word Wise," "Web Wise," and "Constitutional Wise" features) help to provide clear, concise explanations of the law.

A comprehensive guide to legal style and usage, with practical advice on how to write clear, jargon-free legal prose. Includes style tips as well as definitions.

A comprehensive guide to legal style and usage, with practical advice on how to write clear, jargon-free legal prose. Includes style tips as well as definitions.

"Master Legal Vocabulary & Terminology: Legal Vocabulary In Use: Contracts, Prepositions, Phrasal Verbs + 425 Downloadable Expert Legal Documents & Templates in English!", provides a structured framework under which law students, lawyers and other law professionals can significantly improve their knowledge of legal vocabulary and terminology. You will be taken through the main vocabulary and grammar structures in commercial contracts and allowed to practise them through highly targeted vocabulary and grammar activities, which aim to develop, not only your lexical and grammatical skills, but also your confidence and overall competence within international legal settings. Towards the end of the book you will find a short glossary with all the main terms of contract law and legal vocabulary in English, together with a phrasal verb mini-dictionary which includes definitions and exercises to perfect your mastery of this area of English. Finally, the last section of this book, contains an amazing selection of 425 legal templates to guide you through drafting contracts, letters, affidavits and many many other documents. It will be an invaluable resource for your studies and career in the legal arena.

This is a dictionary of the language of the law as used in America today. Most of this dictionary is written in ordinary English. Most of the words that lawyers use in writing and talking about the law are the ordinary words that fill the dictionaries of the English language. They have a place in this dictionary when the law gives them a specialized sense; or to emphasize that there is none. Too often an apparent change in sense results not from the law but from bad grammar or redundancy; or from an unsorted host of possible meanings jumbled together and left to the vagaries of interpretation. At the other extreme, individual cases, each walled in by its own distinctive facts and law, may give an immaculately narrowed sense, but neither generalized definition nor standards for the gradation of sense that is the essence of clear usage. A small number of citations to cases of special relevance to word usage are included in this dictionary. The citation count does not measure the indebtedness of this dictionary to old and current sources of American legal usage. The definitions and examples of usage in this dictionary have roots in the law reports of thousands of litigated cases; in law writings formal and informal, profound and trivial; in the talk of lawyers and judges in court and out--the formal and the informal--colloquial and slangy, talk that is precise and talk that is mush; in a long line of dictionaries past and present--law dictionaries, and dictionaries of English and its usage. Drawing from all those sources, the definitions and examples are shaped by more than a half-century of personal immersion in the oral and written language of the law, as law student, practicing lawyer, professor, and writer. And something has been added. This dictionary is designed to sort out the words used in the law, and to identify the different senses in which each is used, and can be used. With cross-reference, it tells how words are related to each other and separated for each other, so that discrimination and choice of usage are possible. Words are grouped together as identical, similar, disparate, departing from or paralleling the usages of ordinary English. Where usage is not uniform, the dictionary comments on what is better, best, and worst. The dictionary concentrates on general legal usage for a profession practicing in the American common law tradition . . . The dictionary does not detail the multitude of other jurisdictional variations, but calls attention to the fact of variation. Although the distinction is often difficult to make, this is a word dictionary, not a short legal encyclopedia. Technicalities in general legal usage are included, but not the intricacies of learning in specialized fields of the law. There is no standard legal pronunciation. Pronunciation is included here when it is unusual, exotic, controversial, or needed to prevent confusion. Pronunciation is rendered in simplified phonetics. American law dictionaries go back to 1839. This one is new and different. --David Mellinkoff, from the Preface