Glossary

Legal glossary

763 definitions · page 6 of 13.

Legal Terms Kickback: Kickback information: An agreement, illegal in nature, where part of the purchase price or sum received is returned "under the table," so to speak. A kickback may be exacted by threat, coercion, or bribery.
Legal Terms Kickout Clause: Kickout Clause information: An agreement, or clause contained in an agreement, that allows a party to end or modify their end of the contract if a specified event occurs or does not occur.
Legal Terms Kidnapping: Kidnapping information: Forcible abduction or stealing of another person. At common law, there was a requirement that the person kidnapped had to be taken to another country.
Legal Terms Kin: Kin information: Those to whom one is related by blood, marriage, or adoption.
Legal Terms Kindred: Kindred information: A relationship, usually be blood, between persons.
Legal Terms Kleptomania: Kleptomania information: The uncontrollable urge to steal, even without an economic motive.
Legal Terms Knock Off: Knock Off information: An unauthorized copy of something.
Legal Terms Knowingly: Knowingly information: Acting with intelligence, knowledge, awareness of the consequences, and consciously. Knowingly is a mental state relevant in many crimes.
Legal Terms Known Heir: Known Heir information: A person entitled to inherit whose identity is known and who is present to claim the inheritance.
Legal Terms Labor Dispute: Labor Dispute information: A dispute between labor, or the work force of a company, and management, regarding the conditions of the workplace or pay.
Legal Terms Laches: Laches information: Laches is a defense to a claim available when the claimant has been unreasonably dilatory in pursuing the claim or in protecting his or her rights. The delay ordinarily must be enough that the defending party is prejudiced.
Legal Terms Landlord: Landlord information: Ordinarily, this is the person to whom rent is due. The landlord owns the underlying real property and grants a leasehold interest to the tenant.
Legal Terms Lanham Act: Lanham Act information: This is the Federal trademark law that provides for a national system of trademark registration intended to protect the owner of a trademark against the use of similar marks where confusion could result.
Legal Terms Larceny: Larceny information: Taking the property of another with the intent to deprive them of the property. This is stealing.
Legal Terms Law Review: Law Review information: Every major law school publishes a periodical, usually quarterly, known as a law review. Scholarly articles appear on current legal issues. Top first year grade getters in law school often make up the editorial staff. It is a definite…
Legal Terms Lawyer: Lawyer information: A person that is authorized or licensed to represent people in court. An attorney.
Legal Terms Legal Funding: Legal Funding Information: Legal Funding is sometimes called advance funding, or litigation money. Simply put, Legal Funding is a means of financing the claimant while his or her claim goes through the legal system, which can be time consuming. The legal…
Legal Terms Legalese: Legalese information: The language of the law, which is sometimes difficult to understand, and which makes use of archaic terms.
Legal Terms Levy: Levy information: The act of imposing or charging a tax or fine.
Legal Terms Lex Loci: Lex Loci information: This refers to the law of the place where a contract was entered into. This is the law that should apply to questions concerning formation of the contract.
Legal Terms Liability: Liability information: Obligated, responsible, at fault, for damages or for payment of a claim by another.
Legal Terms Life Expectancy: Life Expectancy information: An actuarial concept regarding the expected remaining length of a person, through a statistical analysis.
Legal Terms Life Tenant: Life Tenant information: The name of the real property estate wherein the grantor grants property to the grantee, but only for the remainder of the grantee's life. Thus, if the grantee sells, the buyer only gets the property until the seller dies. This form…
Legal Terms Limited Liability: Limited Liability information: Liability that is formally limited by law or by contract, usually in reference to a cap that the company owners can be liable for, usually up to the limit of the investment they make.
Legal Terms Limited Liability Partnership: Limited Liability Partnership Information: A limited liability partnership (LLP) is a form of LLC, or limited liability corporation, in common use among groups of professionals, such as lawyers. Like a corporation, and yet unlike a corporation. The LLP does…
Legal Terms Liquid Assets: Liquid Assets information: An asset, or item of value, that can be converted to cash or its equivalent relatively easy.
Legal Terms Liquidating Partner: Liquidating Partner information: Partner charged with cashing out a dissolving partner.
Legal Terms Litigation: Litigation information: Refers to the act of bringing and prosecuting a law case through the courts. A claim may go through a settlement or negotiation stage, but when that process fails and suit is filed, the claim is said to have gone into litigation.
Legal Terms Loan: Loan information: Delivery of an item of property, usually money, in exchange for a promise to repay that amount within some time limit, plus paying an interest.
Legal Terms Loiter: Loiter information: Dilatory and slow in movement; to stand idly.
Legal Terms Loophole: Loophole information: Making an exception to the application of a particular statutory requirement by parsing the language or finding and taking advantage of an ambiguity.
Legal Terms Lump Sum: Lump Sum information: A lump sum is actually a slang term for the payment of a large amount of money at a single time, instead of payment made in smaller amounts over a long period of time. For example, large lottery winnings are usually scheduled to be paid…
Legal Terms Majority: Majority information: Most, or to exceed by at least more than one-half the total.
Legal Terms Malfeasance: Malfeasance information: Doing a wrongful act. Conversely, Misfeasance is doing as act wrongfully.
Legal Terms Malice: Malice information: In criminal law, this is a state of mind wherein the actor acts with an evil intent towards another without justification.
Legal Terms Mandamus: Mandamus information: An order from a superior court to a lower court to do some act or to do some act differently. The order itself is a writ of mandamus.
Legal Terms Manslaughter: Manslaughter information: An unlawful killing of a human being without justification but without premeditation. Heat of passion killings may be manslaughter.
Legal Terms Marital Deduction: Marital Deduction information: An exception under the rules for the federal gift tax for transfers of property made between spouses.
Legal Terms Marketable Security: Marketable Security information: A stock or bond that can be traded without difficulty in the market and that has a price that can be easily determined with reference to the market reports. A marketable security also must have the attribute that it can be…
Legal Terms McNaughten Rule: McNaughten Rule information: McNaughten was the defendant in an 1843 English criminal case that is the source of the modern rule of the insanity defense. At McNaughten's time it was lack of mental capacity to understand the difference between right and wrong.
Legal Terms Medicaid: Medicaid information: A need based government program that pays certain medical benefits to needy and low income people.
Legal Terms Medical Savings Account (MSA): Medical Savings Account (MSA) information: In Tax Law, the internal revenue service (IRS) allows for some offset, or deduction, to employees of small businesses and self employed people to have an account to save for and pay for medical expenses that are…
Legal Terms Mens Rea: Mens Rea information: Guilty mind, this is the mental state required in virtually all criminal cases.
Legal Terms Merger: Merger information: The combining of two business interests by combining assets and joining management together.
Legal Terms Mineral Rights: Mineral Rights information: A property interest. This is the right to the minerals found on or below a piece of real estate. The interest can be sold, leased, etc.
Legal Terms Miranda Warning: Miranda Warning information: Miranda was the defendant in a case wherein a confession should have been suppressed because it was not voluntary. Since that case it has been routinely required that custodial interrogation may not take place without a prior…
Legal Terms Misfeasance: Misfeasance information: Misuse of office
Legal Terms Mistrial: Mistrial information: A declaration by the trial judge that brings a trial to a halt, other than on the merits, because of some error that has occurred before the jury.
Legal Terms Model Penal Code: Model Penal Code information: A comprehensive model criminal code that was written by law professors and that has been adopted in whole or in part in many jurisdictions, making the criminal law a more modern uniform system.
Legal Terms Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS): Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS) information: In Tax Law and in accounting matters, MACRS is a depreciation method, or system, in popular use since 1986, that allows businesses to write off, or depreciate non real estate property, faster…
Legal Terms Monopoly: Monopoly information: A company that is so large, or so placed, that it has control over a market or commodity, such that it can set prices and make unfair its competition.
Legal Terms Month to Month Tenancy: Month to Month Tenancy information: A short term lease of real property, that renews for additional months unless terminated.
Legal Terms Mortgage: Mortgage information: A loan for the purchase of a home, where the home itself is used as collateral.
Legal Terms Motion: Motion information: A written request from a party for a specific action by the judge.
Legal Terms Multiple Listing Service (MLS): Multiple Listing Service (MLS) information: An agreement among real estate agents whereby information is shared in order to facilitate contact between buyers and sellers.
Legal Terms Multiple Support Agreement: Multiple Support Agreement information: In Tax Law and in divorce matters, a multiple support agreement is simply a written document that declares which of two or more persons may claim another person as a deduction (as a dependent) even though they each…
Legal Terms Murder: Murder information: Most jurisdictions define Murder by degree. It is basically knowingly causing the death of a person after deliberating upon the matter. Murder generally is broken up into degrees. See First Degree Murder and Second Degree Murder.
Legal Terms Narcotic: Narcotic information: Drug that dulls the senses or that causes sleepiness.
Legal Terms National debt: National Debt information: Money borrowed by a government, or owed to the people.
Legal Terms Necessaries Statute: Necessaries Statute information: This codifies the old common law doctrine of necessaries where it was held generally that a husband, or a father, was liable to pay for goods sold to his wife or children that are necessary to sustain their lives. Modernly…