"lawyer up" meaning in English

See lawyer up in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: lawyers up [present, singular, third-person], lawyering up [participle, present], lawyered up [participle, past], lawyered up [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} lawyer up (third-person singular simple present lawyers up, present participle lawyering up, simple past and past participle lawyered up)
  1. (intransitive, chiefly US, informal) To exercise one's right to legal representation; to engage the services of a lawyer. Tags: US, informal, intransitive Categories (topical): Criminal law, Law
    Sense id: en-lawyer_up-en-verb-o6d6~FaV Disambiguation of Criminal law: 41 24 35 Disambiguation of Law: 39 26 35 Categories (other): American English, English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English phrasal verbs with particle (up), English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 15 39 45 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 34 34 33 Disambiguation of English phrasal verbs with particle (up): 32 35 33 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 32 35 33
  2. (intransitive, chiefly US, informal, business) To conduct matters in accord with legal formalities or so as to avoid legal risk. Tags: US, informal, intransitive Categories (topical): Business, Criminal law, Law
    Sense id: en-lawyer_up-en-verb-QZkc6rT~ Disambiguation of Criminal law: 41 24 35 Disambiguation of Law: 39 26 35 Categories (other): American English, English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English phrasal verbs with particle (up), English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 15 39 45 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 34 34 33 Disambiguation of English phrasal verbs with particle (up): 32 35 33 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 32 35 33 Topics: business
  3. (transitive, informal, business) To arrange in a way reflecting legal advice. Tags: informal, transitive Categories (topical): Business, Criminal law, Law
    Sense id: en-lawyer_up-en-verb-H5fTFC81 Disambiguation of Criminal law: 41 24 35 Disambiguation of Law: 39 26 35 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English phrasal verbs with particle (up), English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 15 39 45 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 34 34 33 Disambiguation of English phrasal verbs with particle (up): 32 35 33 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 32 35 33 Topics: business

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for lawyer up meaning in English (7.1kB)

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      "form": "lawyers up",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
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    },
    {
      "form": "lawyering up",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "lawyered up",
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        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "lawyered up",
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
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          "_dis": "39 26 35",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2001 July 15, Amanda Ripley, “Rage Of The Hamptons”, in Time, archived from the original on 2012-03-29",
          "text": "By the time patrol cars got to the friend's house, so had her lawyer. With her attorney running blocker, police could not even ascertain if Grubman had been driving the car, says Suffolk County district attorney James Catterson. \"She was lawyered up, as we like to say.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 April 5, Elizabeth Wetmore, “How Far Will Parents Go to Protect Their Sons?”, in The New York Times",
          "text": "In the summer of 2019, when the boys are involved in the death of the young woman at that swimming hole, the parents of Barton Hills do what any caregivers might do, if they are rich or rich-adjacent. They lawyer up, and when this strategy fails to provide a sufficient shield between their boys and whatever they may or may not have been party to, the families up their game.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
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        "To exercise one's right to legal representation; to engage the services of a lawyer."
      ],
      "id": "en-lawyer_up-en-verb-o6d6~FaV",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(intransitive, chiefly US, informal) To exercise one's right to legal representation; to engage the services of a lawyer."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
        "informal",
        "intransitive"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Whenever we do business with those guys, we lawyer up to protect ourselves.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010, Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network, spoken by Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield)",
          "text": "And I'll bet what you hated the most was that they identified me as a co-founder of Facebook, which I am. You better lawyer up asshole, because I'm not coming back for 30%, I'm coming back for EVERYTHING.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To conduct matters in accord with legal formalities or so as to avoid legal risk."
      ],
      "id": "en-lawyer_up-en-verb-QZkc6rT~",
      "links": [
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(intransitive, chiefly US, informal, business) To conduct matters in accord with legal formalities or so as to avoid legal risk."
      ],
      "tags": [
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        "informal",
        "intransitive"
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          "_dis": "41 24 35",
          "kind": "topical",
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          "name": "Criminal law",
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            "Fundamental"
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        {
          "_dis": "39 26 35",
          "kind": "topical",
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          "name": "Law",
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          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "By the time we finished lawyering up the agreement, we didn't want to sign it.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To arrange in a way reflecting legal advice."
      ],
      "id": "en-lawyer_up-en-verb-H5fTFC81",
      "links": [
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(transitive, informal, business) To arrange in a way reflecting legal advice."
      ],
      "tags": [
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        "transitive"
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      "topics": [
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    }
  ],
  "word": "lawyer up"
}
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          "ref": "2001 July 15, Amanda Ripley, “Rage Of The Hamptons”, in Time, archived from the original on 2012-03-29",
          "text": "By the time patrol cars got to the friend's house, so had her lawyer. With her attorney running blocker, police could not even ascertain if Grubman had been driving the car, says Suffolk County district attorney James Catterson. \"She was lawyered up, as we like to say.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 April 5, Elizabeth Wetmore, “How Far Will Parents Go to Protect Their Sons?”, in The New York Times",
          "text": "In the summer of 2019, when the boys are involved in the death of the young woman at that swimming hole, the parents of Barton Hills do what any caregivers might do, if they are rich or rich-adjacent. They lawyer up, and when this strategy fails to provide a sufficient shield between their boys and whatever they may or may not have been party to, the families up their game.",
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        "To exercise one's right to legal representation; to engage the services of a lawyer."
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          "lawyer",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(intransitive, chiefly US, informal) To exercise one's right to legal representation; to engage the services of a lawyer."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
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        {
          "text": "Whenever we do business with those guys, we lawyer up to protect ourselves.",
          "type": "example"
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        {
          "ref": "2010, Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network, spoken by Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield)",
          "text": "And I'll bet what you hated the most was that they identified me as a co-founder of Facebook, which I am. You better lawyer up asshole, because I'm not coming back for 30%, I'm coming back for EVERYTHING.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To conduct matters in accord with legal formalities or so as to avoid legal risk."
      ],
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        [
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          "business"
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(intransitive, chiefly US, informal, business) To conduct matters in accord with legal formalities or so as to avoid legal risk."
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        {
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        "To arrange in a way reflecting legal advice."
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(transitive, informal, business) To arrange in a way reflecting legal advice."
      ],
      "tags": [
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      "topics": [
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    }
  ],
  "word": "lawyer up"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.