Wex: the online legal dictionary and encyclopaedia

Today I learnt about Wex, a freely available online legal dictionary and encyclopaedia, written by legal experts. It’s hosted by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. 

It’s aimed at “law novices” but can be handy for those researchers who want to do a quick web search rather than refer to the tried and trusted hardcopy dictionaries and encyclopaedias we librarians tend to prefer. 

To ensure quality of entries, contributors are currently limited to those in the “selective author pool”. There is no hard and fast rule about who may contribute, but preference is given to legal academics and distinguished practitioners, and those with legal qualifications.

The entries are quite comprehensive and sometimes links are provided to the relevant entry in Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary, which can be useful for non/new-lawyers. You can search and browse, as you’d expect.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/

Solvency II Glossary

Today I learnt there is a glossary to Solvency II terms on the Lloyd's of London website:

http://www.lloyds.com/The-Market/Operating-at-Lloyds/Solvency-II/Information-for-managing-agents/Solvency-II-Glossary

Lloyd's has also made available a Solvency II timeline and online tutorials if you really need to know your stuff.

Index of Legal Terms on Westlaw UK

Today I learnt there's a "new way to start your legal research" on Westlaw UK. Westlaw has launched an Index of Legal Terms, that provides the full text of the following legal dictionaries:

• Jowitt's Dictionary of English Law
• Stoud's Judicial Dictionary of Words and Phrases
• Osborn's Concise Law Dictionary

This is in addition to the Statutory Definition search on the legislation tab, launched a couple of months ago, that allows you - no surprises here! - to search for statutory definitions in UK legislation.

http://westlaw.co.uk/books/index_of_legal_terms.shtm

Authoritative Legal Dictionaries for English Law

Today I learnt which are the most authoritative legal dictionaries for English law. I was asked whether Black's Law Dictionary was the best resource for English law, so I got it off the shelf to take a look. A quick flick established that it was published in the US, but it wasn't clear whether it covered US law, English law or both. I could see no explanation of which jurisdictions were covered in the book itself or on the publisher's website. Needing to confirm coverage from a reputable source, I once again turned to IALS' online Research Guides (by jurisdiction) which told me that Black's is indeed American, so should be used with caution. So for English law I think I'll stick to Stroud's, Jowett's and Words and Phrases Legally Defined:

http://ials.sas.ac.uk/library/guides/research/res_uk.htm#dictionaries

http://www.blackslawdictionary.com/