Watch the video. Do the comparison.

We have a license to sell Dean’s Law Dictionary. We offer it at casebriefsco.com.

All students are now realizing that Dean’s Law Dictionary is the most valuable tool you have for learning complex idiomatic law. We get the same messages every day from more and more students at more and more schools….” everybody knows you need Dean’s to learn the law.”

On December 22, 2009, CNET reviewed Dean’s Law Dictionary: “… This dictionary’s breadth and depth as a reference of the law make it a fantastic choice that we recommend unreservedly.”

That was over a decade ago and it is now 20x bigger in 2024.

You don’t have to take our word for it. Take advantage of a free trial and read some of our definitions for complex idiomatic law such as felony murder, nuisance, negligence, insanity, mens rea, and proximate cause. We dare you to compare them to Black’s.

You have a choice, use an expensive Black’s a few times and then put it in a corner never to be touched again and contend with confusion and frustration or use Dean’s every day many times a day and get true knowledge and understanding at your fingertips.

A free trial is now available at casebriefsco.com

 

Black’s vs. Dean’s

 

The law is all technical definitions. Technical definitions are the lifeblood of understanding the law. In law school you must know the technical definitions in order to ask the right questions to do your issue spotting on exams. How well you do in law school depends on how well you memorized the law and how many questions you can ask. If you ask all the questions you will spot all the issues. We examined 180 key definitions for contract law in both Black’s and Dean’s. Black’s had no exam writing definitions for 161 of the terms and marginal exam writing definitions for the rest. A good exam writing definition gives you all the elements that comprise the prima facie case for the word being defined. Black’s just doesn’t have any exam writing definitions for the vast majority of the key words in contracts and has marginal definitions for the rest. Dean’s has exam writing definitions for all 180 terms. In fact, Dean’s has exam writing definitions for all the terms in every major course in law school. Black’s has marginal exam writing definitions for on average 16% of the terms and no definitions for the rest. Do you really want to trust your law school and professional law career to Black’s Law Dictionary?

 

Black’s is printed and obsolete.

 

Black’s Law Dictionary is printed. Dean’s is digital. Anything as complex and complicated as a law dictionary, which is meant to be used many times per day, must be available in a digital format. Black’s used to be the standard but it is printed. It is impossible to easily use Black’s to search for words or content and forget about using Black’s to copy or paste the material you need into your court documents or class notes.

Black’s is heavy and you will have to lug it around everywhere you go each and every day. Of course, there is something to be said for the extra exercise you get but when you add that to everything else you carry around it’s a nuisance. Fundamentally, Black’s is just a nuisance.

Black’s is more expensive because it is printed. So besides having significantly less utility it costs you more.

Black’s has virtually no explanations for complex idiomatic terms.

We checked three editions of Black’s Law Dictionary for the size of the definition for Felony Murder. Black’s has an average of 120 words to define the idiomatic term of Felony Murder.

• It has no sub definitions.
• It has no statutory nor any case cites for any of the three definitions for felony murder in the three editions.
• It has no comparison definitions for felony murder and any other legal terms or concepts.

In comparison to Black’s Law Dictionary, Dean’s has 19 definitions and sub definitions including one comparison definition with a grand total of 30,788 words, and over one thousand case and statutory cites.

• Do you really think Black’s will help you in your legal career?
• Do you really think you would know anything about felony murder after reading Black’s Law Dictionary ?
•
This comparison is not an isolated event. We stopped doing comparisons with Black’s after we got even more one-sided results for the top 40 key idiomatic terms used in the law profession and law school.

• Black’s has no comparison definitions.
• Black’s has virtually no case cites.
• Black’s has virtually no statutory cites.

We could go on and on and on. Black’s Law Dictionary used to be the best law dictionary you could buy. If you don’t believe us just download a free copy of Dean’s and use it for free for 3 days. You can verify everything we said as being the absolute truth with no sales puffery. Black’s is not the best law dictionary you can buy.

 

What happened to all the Law?

 

Printed Legal Dictionaries have been fundamentally the same size ever since their inception. All of them, regardless of who publishes them, are about 1500 or so pages. The key question that has always bothered us and one that you must ask is, “What happened to all the law that has been formulated and created over the past centuries?” Do the people that publish printed law dictionaries simply pick and choose what law they want to present to you? What happens to the rest of the law in a printed dictionary? Let’s not even get started on, “Where are all the case cites that you need?”

Dean’s is digital so we keep the old and add the new. We don’t need to make decisions as to what to keep because of limited space concerns. The more legal research we accomplish the better and better Dean’s gets. The more valuable it becomes for you the user because you will find what you need. That certainly cannot be said about a printed legal dictionary.

Plus, it’s so easy to copy and paste any of the materials into your standard word processor for immediate and efficient usage. You can’t do that with a printed dictionary! What good is a legal dictionary if you can’t copy and paste out of it what you need for personal usage?

Enhanced print size. Let’s face it. Not everyone has great eye sight and it is almost impossible for people with good eye sight to read a printed legal dictionary let alone someone with not so good eye sight. We have enhanced screen views for Dean’s that you will find pure pleasure. Does your printed dictionary allow you to change the screen view to make it easier to read?

And does your Black’s law dictionary have an easy to type in look up function? With Dean’s all you need to do is to start typing the letters into the look up box and as you do it immediately begins to take you where you want to go. If you get near where you need to be but just don’t know how to spell the word, the easy to use scroll down menu can get you where you need to be.
How about searching for key words or phrases? We have an indexed search function that allows you to get all the information you need in just a few seconds. What good is a law dictionary without the ability to search through its entire content?

We have one more interesting feature; Invisible Hyperlinks™. Just highlight a word (up to 3) anywhere in the Rom Law™ and it will look it up in Dean’s. While in Dean’s you can use Invisible Hyperlinks™ to navigate through words and definitions in the law dictionary as fast as you can move your mouse. Bet your printed dinosaur can’t do that!

This edition of Dean’s has over 173,172 entries with 241,583 words or phrases defined and 317,118 case cites! 1,000’s of Statutory Legal Definitions, 100’s of web address links, Abbreviations, Over 7,000 Quotations, Over 65,000 Synonyms, A full Latin dictionary, 100’s of comparisons, and our now infamous Words of Wit™.