English may be the common language of the world, but the Common Law is not the common law of the world.

That's why together with more than a dozen leading universities, TransLegal has invested over 50,000 lawyer-linguist hours in developing a global standard for legal terminology.

The World Law Dictionary

100,000+ legal terms
More than 100,000 legal terms are translated, defined, brought into context, referenced and supported by examples.
Translated by hand
Every legal term found in the World Law Dictionary is translated and brought into context by our teams of universities, lawyer-linguists, and legal practitioners.
A database for MT engine training
The World Law Dictionary is a powerful database currently comprised of over 1.25 million words in the legal domain launched in 20 juristictions.

The legal services industry needs language standards

Each country has its own laws and legal concepts, most of which are rooted in Civil Law systems, and cannot be translated into English by simply using "equivalent” Anglo-American (Common Law) legal terminology. Yet businesspersons around the globe must understand the laws of the countries in which they do business and the lawyers advising them must be equipped with language their clients and in-house counsel can understand.

There is currently no common and agreed platform for the world’s legal terminology

• No authoritative sources for legal terminology –no equivalent of IFRS
• No cross-border agreement on use of English terminology
• Fragmented and extremely localtranslation industry

Challenges for international lawyers

• Increasingly complex international legal practice
• Enormous volumes of documents in multiple languages
• Rapid rise in use of software in legal practice

The World Law Dictionary is:

the world’s most extensive set of English-language resources for the legal sector

a proprietary database of 100,000+ translated legal terms

a reference tool with 10,000+ user guidance notes

the largest collaboration of academic institutions on legal terminology

a sophisticated platform easily accessible to users

a database that can be used to train and improve machine translation software

a product used by major universities, governments, bar associations

Find out more about some of our university partners

World Law Dictionary Countries & Partners

Ausria · Australia · Belgium · Brazil · Canada · China · Columbia · France · Hungary · India · Italy · Japan · Germany · Poland · Portugal · Norway · Switzerland · Spain · Sweden · Turkey · United States of America · United Kingdom