List of legal abbreviations

It is common practice in legal documents to cite to other publications by using standard abbreviations for the title of each source. Abbreviations may also be found for common words or legal phrases. Such citations and abbreviations are found in court decisions, statutes, regulations, journal articles, books, and other documents. Below is a basic list of very common abbreviations. Because publishers adopt different practices regarding how abbreviations are printed, one may find abbreviations with or without periods for each letter. For example, the Code of Federal Regulations may appear abbreviated as "C.F.R." or just as "CFR."

For abbreviations not found in this list, here are alternate websites to search:

For legal abbreviations not found online, try searching one of the following print sources. These publications are regularly found at law and other libraries.