# Legal vocabulary

About 13,000 terms of art, Latin phrases and procedural vocabulary, so they survive transcription intact.

A general dictation tool hears "voir dire" and types "voir dyre", or "vwa deer". It hears "res ipsa
loquitur" as three English words that sound roughly similar. The legal vocabulary gives Blabb the
list it needs to get those right.

Turn it on in Settings → **Writing style → Transcription mode → Legal**.

## What is in it

About 13,000 terms, from established legal reference dictionaries plus a curated set of Latin
phrases and modern practice terms. Three kinds of word:

- **Terms of art** — estoppel, tortfeasor, indemnity: words with a settled legal meaning that
  general models treat as ordinary vocabulary.
- **Latin phrases** — habeas corpus, res ipsa loquitur, obiter dictum.
- **Procedural vocabulary** — the language of filings, hearings and pleadings.

## What changes in practice

Latin survives transcription instead of being flattened into the nearest English. Procedural terms
come out spelled the way the reporter spells them.

As with the medical list, the hard errors are real words that sound like the term you said — "tort"
heard as "taught", "in camera" turned into ordinary prose. Sorting those out takes the sentence
around them, so it is the cleanup model that does it.

The vocabulary applies whichever [cleanup style](/docs/cleanup-styles/overview/) you use, but what it
can do differs. On **Original** it fixes mangled spellings of specialist words directly. On every
other style — **Fix typos** is the lightest — the terms go to the cleanup model, which can also
catch the sound-alikes. See [how that works](/docs/editions/overview/).

## Matter names are a different job

Party names, matter names and your firm's own shorthand are not in any published dictionary, and
they are the words that appear in every document you write.

Teach those to Blabb once, in Settings → **Writing style → Saved words**:
[Teach Blabb your words](/docs/cleanup-styles/saved-words/). The vocabulary handles the profession's
language; saved words handle your files.

## There is no citation formatting

Blabb will not format a case citation for you. There are no templates and no document formats — the
legal vocabulary is a word list and some context handed to the cleanup step, and nothing more.

What it does do is tell the cleanup model to leave them alone: party names, statute references and
dates are named in its instructions as things to preserve exactly as dictated. That is a strong
instruction rather than a mechanical guarantee, so for anything you would be embarrassed to get
wrong, dictate it on **Original** or check it in [History](/docs/get-started/history/).

## Confidentiality

Speech recognition and cleanup both run on your PC, and the term list is installed with the app
rather than reached over a network. Nothing you dictate is uploaded, so there is no third party
receiving client information at the dictation step — which is to say there is no additional vendor
to assess for it.

The exact boundary — what leaves the machine, and when — is in
[What stays on your device](/docs/privacy/what-stays-on-device/). The wider picture is in
[Confidential dictation](/confidential-dictation).

> [!IMPORTANT]
> Blabb is a dictation aid, not legal advice. Review what it typed before it goes on the file.

## See also

- [Legal edition](/legal-dictation-edition) — what it costs and what is in it.
- [Dictation for lawyers](/dictation-for-lawyers) — confidentiality obligations in the voice era.
- [Medical and legal vocabulary](/docs/editions/overview/) — how the matching works.
- [Teach Blabb your words](/docs/cleanup-styles/saved-words/) — matter and party names.