27 Dictionaries and Encyclopaedias
Kate Thompson and Melanie Lovich
Legal Dictionaries
Legal dictionaries assist with clarifying the meaning of legal jargon and other terms and phrases. They may provide references to legislative provisions defining the term or to cases that have considered the term. Legal dictionaries can help you to:
- identify terms relevant to a particular area of law;
- understand specific legal meanings for everyday words;
- locate words and phrases defined in legislation or judicially interpreted in case law.
Your university may prescribe an official dictionary to use as part of your law studies. Use your university library search to find other law dictionaries available in print or online, for example Peter Spiller’s Dictionary of New Zealand Law.[1]
The print edition is known as the New Zealand Law Dictionary.[2]
A high-quality, generic dictionary can be helpful too, such as the Oxford English Dictionary.[3]
Legal Encyclopaedias
Legal encyclopaedias contain more extensive information than dictionaries and provide:
- a concise introduction to the topic;
- key legislation and case references;
- links to relevant legislation, judgments and secondary sources from other key jurisdictions.
They are a useful starting point when researching an unfamiliar area of law or legal topic. The table of contents is organised by title (field of law or subject) and then structured into chapters > subheadings > [paragraphs]. Encyclopaedias provide basic overview information for legal concepts, including references to key legislative provisions and case law in the notes area beneath each paragraph. To find information in legal encyclopaedias, browse through the table of contents topics using the + symbols, search across an entire encyclopaedia by keywords or limit a search to within headings/titles only.
The legal encyclopaedia for Aotearoa New Zealand is the Laws of New Zealand, published by LexisNexis and available on the Lexis Advance platform.
