Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage is a combination of a legal dictionary and a style guide, and is primarily devoted to helping legal writers use legal words effectively. Older dictionaries, such as Bouvier’s Law Dictionary or older editions of Black’s, are sometimes used to trace the historical meaning of a term. The legal dictionary most commonly used by attorneys and courts is Black’s Law Dictionary. If you’re running a keyword search and the results aren’t what you expected, you can use a dictionary to make sure the term you’re using means what you think it does. Lawyers use legal dictionaries to look up unfamiliar terms, check to make sure they are using a term correctly, and to persuade a court to interpret a term in a favorable way. ![]() A legal dictionary will define terms more precisely than a general dictionary, and it will include latin phrases and legal abbreviations. Legal dictionaries define terms as they are used in the law. These encyclopedias vary in quality, and are used less than the general encyclopedias. Some states also have encyclopedias containing information specific to state laws. These are designed to provide more technical assistance in areas like trial preparation and finding government and business forms, and are structured less like a traditional encyclopedia. also publishes topical encyclopedias, which are designed to aid practitioners in more specific areas of the law. is published by Thompson Reuters, it includes West Digest topics and keycite references to help you find related materials in Westlaw and other Thompson Reuters products.Īm. articles tend to be longer and more comprehensive. articles are often shorter, and focus on cases the editors determine to be particularly important. The two major legal encyclopedias are American Jurisprudence 2d ( Am.Jur.) and Corpus Juris Secundum (C.J.S.). Because of their general nature, encyclopedias are not always the best source for jurisdiction specific primary law sources, but often the citations provided are a good start for finding similar law in a particular jurisdiction. ![]() Most legal encyclopedia articles focus on case law, rather than statutory law, and will include citations to relevant cases. They are a good place to start because they will provide a context for more specific research, and their broad nature helps ensure the researcher is aware of the scope of the issues being researched.Įncyclopedias should never be cited as sources of the law, but they can be helpful in directing the researcher to primary sources. Legal encyclopedias are used to orient the researcher to unfamiliar areas of the law, and provide fairly general overviews of a large number of legal topics.
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