I’m a first year law student, and am becoming increasingly frustrated that Word’s default spell checker doesn’t recognize many legal terms.
I’m looking for a dictionary of legal terms that I can download and plug into Word so that I don’t have to keep turning to Black’s when Microsoft says I’ve misspelled something.
I searched on Google and download.com and found a couple of full Legal Dictionaries on CD-ROM, but they’re a bit out of my price range (anything costing more than nothing is out of my price range).
So, am I screwed, or is there something out there?
One, that as far as I know, WordPerfect is more commonly used among legal types than Word, which may be hindering your search.
Two, I know that there are medical spell checkers (e.g. Stedman’s) that can be plugged into Word, so I’m thinking there should be a legal analog. I tried Googling “microsoft word legal spell checker” but Google isn’t working for me at the moment. If you haven’t already, you might give that a try, and also the Microsoft site might have something.
Sorry I can’t be more helpful, but maybe this will give you something to go on.
I saw that one, too. The only problem is the $120 price tag. :eek: I’m waaaay too poor for that.
And Scarlet67, it’s interesting that WordPerfect would be more common. I didn’t know that. Word’s what I’ve got and what I know, so I’m going to stick with that until it becomes too burdensome not to switch.
Thanks to both of you. I’m still holding out for a freebie.
WordPerfect used to be fairly widely used in the legal profession. Today I’d guess that about 90% use MS Word. And since today virtually every single transaction is negotiated via e-mail, I wish it was 100%.
As far as the OP, I’ve spent a long time building up my personal dictionary - the new “auto-correct” feature makes it simple to add words. You really should try and avoid legalese anyway.
I stand corrected on the Word/WP thing. Personally, I prefer WP, so i’m a bummer to see it losing ground in yet another area.
London_Calling: Trust me, that’s exactly what the poor soul is trying to avoid. I recently helped copyedit a book that was heavy on medical terms, and I was extremely grateful for my colleague’s medical spell checker. Looking up all those terms, even only on first occurrence, would have made the job take eons longer than it already did. (And even if the default spell checker “catches” them, if you care enough to get it right, you look it up.)
Yep Scarlett, but he’s only a First Year Law student – he’s not editing a book of very many medical terms. From what I recall he’s only got mens rea, actus reas and half a dozen others to add…ok, maybe a few more but it’s not half an hours work.