Jowitt’s Dictionary of English Law, 3rd edn., General Editor Daniel Greenberg, Barrister and Parliamentary Counsel, Vol. I (A to I) and Vol. II (J to Z and Bibliography), London, Sweet & Maxwell/Thomson Reuters 2010

Jowitt’s is for English law what Black’s Law Dictionary is for the US legal system. In fact, while Black’s Law Dictionary is updated every couple of years under the able guidance of Bryan Garner, this is the first new edition of Jowitt’s in more than 30 years. Thus, while the two volumes have a list price of 555£ or close to 1000$, they will last the user for a while. To accomplish the monumental task of updating this classic after such a long time, Daniel Greenberg assembled a mid-size army of highly qualified ‘Specialist Contributing Editors’ from private practice and academia in the United Kingdom. The result is rather marvelous, indeed. On 2472 pages, Jowitt’s provides definitions and explanations for every conceivable term that ever played a role in English law and, of course, for every term and expression, including thousands of abbreviations, that are of great importance for anyone who is practising today in England and Wales, as well as anyone who is drafting contracts or doing arbitration or doing any other form of business that does not exist outside the law in and with England or Wales. While some may think that in the day and age of ubiquitous access to the Internet, traditional dictionaries and encyclopedias are doomed, this would seem to be the case, if at all, only for general knowledge works. First, explanations and definitions for highly specialized legal terminology are not easily found online. Second, and more importantly, for those that are found online, more often than not, the definitions are neither precise nor consistent across different sites. This is exactly the strength of Jowitt’s: It is comprehensive, precise, and authoritative. As long as an excuse along the lines of ‘well, I found it somewhere on the Internet’ does not absolve a lawyer from a case of professional malpractice, this reviewer would go for Jowitt’s every time when it comes to looking up a term of English law.

Frank Emmert