Burton's Legal Thesaurus (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: noun abandonment, adjective abstruse, adjective aberrant, First Amendment, Fifth Amendment, Bill of Rights (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

This twentieth-anniversary edition of a standard source adds more than 1,000 terms relating to electronic commerce, intellectual property, and other recent developments. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"It's the "lawyer's Roget's" "In the legal community, absolute understanding is the measure of perfection...It is through the use of such a tool as the Legal Thesaurus that one may find the precise term to fit the nuances of a particular situation." - William O. Douglas, Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, 1939-1975 "Comprehensive, up-to-date, easy-to-use..." - American Bar Association Journal "Given the popularity of plain-language laws, Legal Thesaurus could just be the book to own" - U.S. Law Week" --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1012 pages
• Publisher: Wiley Publishing; 3 Sub edition (May 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0028653378
• ISBN-13: 978-0028653372
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,343,112 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensable Tool for Your Legal Writing Kit, June 17, 2000

By	Andrew T. Berkowitz (Louisville, Kentucky) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Burton's Legal Thesaurus (Hardcover)

"Good luck," my employer wished as he handed me a plane ticket and a tome of a background packet. I was leaving on a critical six-week business trip to an alien state in the midwest. No problem - except that five days prior the law review had accepted me as one of three evening division 2Ls for candidacy and my first case abstracts were due in twenty days. Hmmm . . .

From my hotel room, I scanned, identified, analyzed, condensed, reviewed, and rewrote the abstracts. Then did it again. And again. And again. But I was missing something. I was missing that "oomph" that propels a reader when reading legal material. And I didn't know what to do.

I decided to take a "creative" break down at the local (bookstore). Of course, I immediately gravitated to the law section of the store and, before you could say "double espresso, please," I had found it! Burton's Legal Thesaurus.

I opened the pages and my heart fluttered. Over 5,000 entries, legal synonyms for any legal term that came to mind, definitions, an overview of federal "plain language" requirements, associated legal concepts, and the list goes on! I wiped away a tear.

I rushed back to my hotel room and my fingers began flying over the laptop. My abstracts sang with power and precision! I could feel the reader compelled - nay, helpless - to turn the page! Burton's Legal Thesaurus had saved the day! I was now a jurisprudence scholar!

Eh, not really. But it really helped out when I didn't have access to my usual materials. However, one thing of which I can assure you, I'll be using this thesaurus for the rest of my career. If you've ever tried to write a legal document with a conventional thesaurus, you've probably felt the same way I did - close, but not close enough. But where do I find "close enough"? Read some more cases? Subscribe to a half dozen law journals? Hang out with the professors? This book definitely dispenses with that problem. You'll find everything you need to write a work filled with persuasion and vigor contained within its pages. If you're not that creative with legal lingo (as I, obviously, am not), you need to order it now. Frankly, you're putting yourself at a serious disadvantage if you don't.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-have for anyone in the legal profession!, August 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Burton's Legal Thesaurus (Hardcover)

I have found that at this stage in my career, (1993 graduate) I really no longer have any need for looking up the definitions of legal words. I pretty much know the definition of most legal words, certainly all of the ones in my field. However, whether I am writing a Registration Statement, a Coverage Letter or even just a Memo to File, I constantly find myself in search of just the right word which accurately describes the point I am trying to communicate. Other times I might be trying to figuring out a new way to reiterated the same point in a document without sounding repetitive. Especially now with the SEC's new "Plain English Rules" in effect, attorneys are required to relay information to investors in fewer pages, while making the information easier for investors to understand. To put it bluntly, I find Burton's Legal Thesaurus to be an indispensable tool in the lawyers arsenal. No lawyer, paralegal, law student, law professor or judge should be without one.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent legal reference tool, May 25, 1999

By A Customer

Burton's Legal Thesaurus (3d Edition) is an excellent legal reference tool that lawyers, law students, legal researchers, legal writers, and law librarians must have on their bookshelf. It is an effective tool for identifying legal synonyms and related terms. Because of the shift from arcane legal writing to plain language, legal writers will find this source to be useful in writing clear and concise legal documents. It provides alternative or similar terms that will aid in researching in electronic sources. The format of the book is excellent; it has an index which allows you to cross-reference terms to the main entry which provides the definition of a term as well as additional information.