Common Legal Terminology

Counsel -
Legal advice; a term also used to refer to the lawyers in a case.
Count -
An allegation in an indictment or information, charging a defendant with a crime. An indictment or information may contain allegations that the defendant committed more than one crime. Each allegation is referred to as a count.
Court - disputes. Judges sometimes use “court” to refer to themselves in the third person, as in “the court has read the briefs.”
Court Reporter -
A person who makes a word-for-word record of what is said in court, generally by using a stenographic machine, shorthand or audio recording, and then produces a transcript of the proceedings upon request.
Credit Counseling -
Generally refers to two events in individual bankruptcy cases: (1) the “individual or group briefing” from a nonprofit budget and credit counseling agency that individual debtors must attend prior to filing under any chapter of the Bankruptcy Code; and (2) the “instructional course in personal financial management” in chapters 7 and 13 that an individual debtor must complete before a discharge is entered. There are exceptions to both requirements for certain categories of debtors, exigent circumstances, or if the U.S. trustee or bankruptcy administrator have determined that there are insufficient approved credit counseling agencies available to provide the necessary counseling.
Creditor -
A person to whom or business to which the debtor owes money or that claims to be owed money by the debtor.
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All terms and definitions on this page are from uscourts.gov/glossary (April 13, 2020)