ULibraries Research Guides: Secondary Legal Resources: Legal Dictionaries

Resource Key

- University of Utah students, faculty and staff only. Off-campus access may be available for students, faculty and staff. Resource available to public patrons at University of Utah libraries.

- S.J. Quinney College of law students, faculty & staff only.

- Resource requires password (please ask library staff to log you in).

Links without one of these keys are free and available to everyone.

Legal Dictionaries

Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations
Search for the meaning of abbreviations for English language legal publications.
Law.com Legal Dictionary
A searchable legal dictionary. You can enter a term to be defined or you can search terms within a definition.
Lawyers.com
Also searchable, this legal dictionary includes a glossary of phrases.
Nolo Legal Dictionary
A free, "plain-English" dictionary of legal terms that anyone can use.

Legal Encyclopedias

Nolo Legal Encyclopedia
An online encyclopedia of topics and articles related to the law and legal issues. Topics include basic introductions to subject areas as well as answers to common questions.

Pro Se?

Nolo Press, the publisher of a number of self-help legal resources, maintains an free online legal dictionary and encyclopedia. The dictionary is helpful for defining specific legal terms while the encyclopedia is contains in-depth articles about broader topics.

If you have access to Westlaw or Lexis, both have an easily searchable law dictionaries in their databases.