Law terms and legal terminology can be daunting. If you have not had any formal training in law, any of the Latin, or even the fancified English, of legal terms and law terminology can be enough to make your head spin. And, should you be unfortunate enough to find yourself in a situation where law terms are being directed at you, and you do not have a lawyer, you may feel like you are in serious trouble. However, with the wealth of information available on the internet, you no longer need to feel helpless. Instead, you can simply look for a glossary of law terms online.
Virtually any law site will have an online glossary for your law terms. You can look up any of your local law firms to see what they have to offer. You can also look on state court sites, or even the federal court site. And then there are also the online legal terminology glossary sites that are dedicated solely to that purpose. And finally, if you are not looking for a wide collection of terms, simply one word or phrase, you can simply Google it and get the result that way as well.
If you watch any of those courtroom dramas that happen to come on around 10 at night, and hear some phrases used over and over, but do not know what they actually mean, perhaps it is time you did a little research. You can very easily look up a list of common legal terms that could make your watching of those courtroom dramas make a lot more sense.
Then there are some plain old interesting terms that you may never hear on your shows, but are actually used in legal proceedings sometimes. For instance, the phrase Amicus Curiae is Latin for Friend of the Court. It refers to someone who has formally offered advice to the court, who is an entity that is interested in the case, but not a party to it. Or Voir Dire, which is an old French term meaning to speak the truth. It refers to the process of jury selection. The term is pronounced like Vwah Deer, but in Texas it is more commonly pronounced as Vore Dire.
Whether you find yourself subpoenaed or summonsed, or are just plain curious, you have plenty of options for researching legal phraseology online. Who knows? It could inspire you to begin a career in law, or simply help you win trivia at your local pub trivia game. Either way, it will make you smarter.
