English Refresher

Vocabulary Hub · C1 · Academic & Professional

C1 Crime & Law Vocabulary: Courts, Evidence and Criminal Justice

This C1 Crime and Law Vocabulary module covers 50 words for the justice system and the offenses that pass through it — defendant, prosecutor, jury, testimony, verdict and parole for the courtroom; fraud, burglary, blackmail, extortion, manslaughter and negligence for the crimes themselves. Every word comes with flashcards, a word-formation drill, a collocations match and a twelve-question quiz, free and self-scoring.

  • 50 words
  • 4 practice modes
  • 12-question quiz
  • Free progress tracking
  • No sign-up

What’s inside this module

Four stages: meet the words, build other forms from them, pair them with the words they normally go with, then test yourself.

Flashcards

Fifty cards, each with the word, its part of speech, a precise C1 definition, an example sentence, and up to three typical collocations on the back — file an appeal, appear before a judge, identity theft. Rate each card “I knew it” or “Still learning” and your ratings are saved automatically.

Word formation

Eight gap sentences that ask for a different form of a word you have just met: allege becomes allegation, convict becomes conviction, innocent becomes innocence, legal becomes legality, negligent becomes negligence.

Collocations & phrases

Ten pairs in the exact form a court report would use: commit a crime, stand trial, reach a verdict, hand down a sentence, gather evidence, issue a warrant, call a witness, file a lawsuit, grant parole.

12-question quiz

A mix of multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank, with an explanation after every answer, right or wrong. Your best score is saved automatically.

How to get the most from it

Five habits that make C1 vocabulary stick, not just pass a quiz.

Follow one case from start to finish

Arrest, custody, indictment, trial, testimony, verdict, sentence, parole. These words happen in a fixed order in real life, and running them in that order works far better than learning fifty legal nouns alphabetically.

The offenses are graded, and the grade matters

Theft, robbery and burglary are three separate offenses, and murder and manslaughter are separated by intention alone. English keeps them apart precisely, so the wrong word here is a factual error rather than a stylistic one.

The outcome words come in pairs

Guilty against innocence, convict against acquit, allegation against evidence. Each pair marks the two possible ends of the same moment, and holding them together makes both much easier to recall under pressure.

Come back for the re-deal

After you finish the flashcard deck, it automatically rebuilds itself from just the words marked “still learning.” A short second pass on the hard ones is worth more than repeating the whole deck.

Use one this week

Take one court case you have read about and summarize it in four sentences using this deck — defendant, evidence, verdict, sentence. A real case gives every one of these words somewhere to sit.

Related modules

Crime and law shares its evidence language with academic English and its formal joins with the discourse markers module: on the grounds that, notwithstanding, in light of.