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An inquest is a judicial inquiry in common law jurisdictions, particularly one held to determine the cause of a person's death. [1] Conducted by a judge , jury , or government official, an inquest may or may not require an autopsy carried out by a coroner or medical examiner .
In law, filing is the delivery of a document to the clerk of a court and the acceptance of the document by the clerk for placement into the official record. [1] If a document is delivered to the clerk and is temporarily placed or deposited with the court (but is not accepted for filing), it is said to have been lodged with or received by the court (but not filed). [2]
Legal proceeding is an activity that seeks to invoke the power of a tribunal in order to enforce a law. Although the term may be defined more broadly or more narrowly as circumstances require, it has been noted that "[t]he term legal proceedings includes proceedings brought by or at the instigation of a public authority, and an appeal against the decision of a court or tribunal". [1]
Criminal proceedings are typically commenced by a government prosecutor. In many U.S. jurisdictions, depending on the rules, prosecutors may have the option to commence a criminal action by filing the petition directly with the court or by seeking an indictment from a grand jury.
In the U.S. legal system, service of process is the procedure by which a party to a lawsuit gives an appropriate notice of initial legal action to another party (such as a defendant), court, or administrative body in an effort to exercise jurisdiction over that person so as to force that person to respond to the proceeding in a court, body, or other tribunal.
In jurisdictions based on English common-law systems, the party bringing a criminal charge (in most cases, the state) is called the "prosecution", but the party bringing most forms of civil action is the "plaintiff" or "claimant". In both kinds of action the other party is known as the "defendant".
The terms legal case management (LCM), legal management system (LMS), matter management or legal project management refer to a subset of law practice management and cover a range of approaches and technologies used by law firms and courts to leverage knowledge and methodologies for managing the life cycle of a case or matter more effectively.
As pointed out by Sandro Nielsen in 1994, law dictionaries can serve various functions. The traditional law dictionary with definitions of legal terms serves to help users understand the legal texts they read (a communicative function) or to acquire knowledge about legal matters independent of any text (a cognitive function) – such law dictionaries are usually monolingual.