One-L Dictionary

one L courses

From Harvard Law School (Library)

The One-L Dictionary was developed by the Harvard Law Library as a starting (rudimentary) dictionary and a helpful guide to basic legal terminology. In 2004 was the last update, and this dictionary do not appear in the Harvard site.

Harvard Law Library’s One-L Dictionary was a list of basic legal terms with straightforward legal definitions aimed at new students of law schools. The goal was to assist beginning law students during the first few days of their law academic experience.

Each legal definition included hypertext links to legal terms that were used in the definitions of the concepts.

According to the Harvard webiste at the time, within 15 days, “most of these words will become part of your regular vocabulary and you will have forgotten those first moments of panic when you thought everyone except you understood what was being said in class. We are not attempting to define the legal terms you will encounter in reading cases such as demurrer, summary judgment, or proximate cause. For that we refer you to the standard legal dictionaries, hornbooks, and your professors. But if you want to know what a hornbook is, what F.3d is, or what a parallel citation is, please read on.”

It was a very brief dictionary. Therefore, while the reader can use this list of legal terms to locate individual words, it is short enough for the reader to explore it through in its entirety.

Washington and Lee University School of Law

Washington and Lee University School of Law (Lexington, VA, United States) produced its own version of the One-L Dictionary which in 2014 is offered still in the website of the Law School.

This One L Dictionary from the Washington and Lee University School of Law was planned to offer “easy reference to vocabulary commonly used in the legal community and to assist”the reader in his/her introduction “to a new vocabulary… new lingo.”As in the case of the Harvard Law One L Dictionary, this also is not a substitute for a complete law dictionary. There are several legal dictionaries available, like the Wolters Kluwer Bouvier Law Dictionary, the Black’s Law Dictionary or our legal dictionary.

Further Reading

Evolving Internet Reference Resources, Rita Pellen and ?William Miller – 2013