What does it take to know a legal term? And how to proceed from knowing its meaning to using it as native professionals do?
The best law dictionary, Black’s Law Dictionary defines e.g. judgment as ”the court’s final determination of the rights and obligations of the parties in a case”.
Now how to use this term as US and UK judges, attorneys etc. do? As they learnt to use it, the hard way, by reading a lot of court decisions and statutes.
Or you can take the efficient way, by learning the underlying sentence patterns used in such judgments and statutes.
What are sentence patterns?
This kind of thing:
court + enter + judgment + finding/holding/ruling + that + subject + verb
court + pass + judgment + barring/enjoining/prohibiting/restraining + person + from action/verb+ing court + pass + judgment + allowing/permitting + person + to verb1
court + grant + judgment + ordering/requiring + person + to verb1
court + give + judgment + awarding + person + result (e.g. damages)
If you learn such patterns, you will be able to produce a multitude of sentences at native pro level.
The green book on the image covers judgments in 45 pages, civil procedure in 150 pages, legal English in 1000 pages, containing 8000+ such patterns and 800 overview tables.
English for your Success in Law ©.