ABA Journal's Top Words in Law for 2024

The ABA Journal's Top Words in Law for 2024 include catchy ways to describe minimal workplace attendance and expert-witness conferences, according to the list recently unveiled by Burton’s Legal Thesaurus.

Law360 has the story on the top new words, chosen by a select committee led by Margaret Wu, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, who teaches legal writing.

According to Law360, the words include:

  • “Coffee badging,” in which a worker shows up at the office for a minimal amount of time to comply with in-person work mandates.

  • “Hot-tubbing,” in which expert witnesses for both parties in a bench trial discuss the case with a judge in an attempt to reach agreement. The procedure is also known as “concurrent expert evidence.”

  • “Word salad,” meaning nonsensical verbiage.

  • “Cybersmear,” which is online defamation, usually contained in an anonymous post.

  • “AI washing,” which is misleading advertising regarding the effectiveness of an artificial intelligence product.

Other AI-related terms include “slop” and “sea of junk,” which refers to poor-quality AI content.

Wu told Law360 that her colleagues and William C. Burton, the creator of Burton’s Legal Thesaurus, look for terms that were brand-new in the past year, that changed in meaning, or that took on different importance.

“We go through and try to find words that we think are interesting and seem to be growing in popularity and words that we think would be helpful for both practicing lawyers as well as legal scholars to be aware of,” Wu said.

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