People have a lot to say about lawyers.
We’re accused of arguing over semantics, splitting hairs, and making a big deal out of words that seem perfectly clear to everyone else. Sometimes, it probably looks that way.
But words matter.
And in a courtroom, the difference between two words can be the difference between describing an allegation and suggesting that it has already been proven.
Consider the difference between victim and complaining witness.
To a criminal defense attorney, it can be fundamental. One term can frame the story before the evidence has been heard; the other identifies a person’s role in the proceedings without presuming the outcome.
That doesn’t mean the word victim is always wrong, or that every lawyer who uses it intends to influence a jury unfairly. It means that language carries weight. And in a courtroom, that weight matters.
One of the earliest lessons I learned during my mentorship program was simple: don’t call the complaining witness a victim.
Not because we were encouraged to be disrespectful.
Not because we were denying that something terrible may have happened.
But because whether a crime occurred is often one of the very questions the jury has been asked to decide.
If the jury hasn’t heard the evidence yet, and the court hasn’t reached a verdict yet, referring to someone as a victim can subtly answer a question that is still supposed to be open.
So we said complaining witness. Many lawyers shorten it to CW.
Interesting, isn’t it?
The prosecutor and the defense attorney may be talking about the exact same person while using entirely different language.
The prosecutor says victim.
The defense says complaining witness.
Neither side changed the facts.
They changed the framing.
And if words didn’t matter, neither side would care.
The default vocabulary of the courtroom comes mostly from the State’s side of the table, which means the system’s own language can frame the story before the defense says a word.
Ironically, one of the few times I was taught to use the word victim was when discussing my own client during voir dire (jury selection).
That usually surprises people.
Prospective jurors often think they already know who the victim is before the first witness is sworn. But criminal cases affect more than one person. My client may lose a job, a home, educational opportunities, family relationships, professional licenses, freedom, or years of a life that cannot be returned.
Whatever the jury ultimately decides, the consequences are real.
The point wasn’t to play games with language.
The point was to remind jurors that every story has more than one human being standing inside it.
That’s the power of words.
They direct attention.
They highlight some realities and push others into the background.
I see the same thing in how we talk about people.
Not long ago, I was discussing a client’s circumstances with a judge. Rather than describing the client as homeless, I used the word unhoused.
Now before anyone starts clutching pearls, no, I wasn’t trying to win a prize for the most politically correct vocabulary.
I was choosing a word carefully.
To me, homeless can sound like an identity. Unhoused describes a condition.
One can sound like this is what the person is.
The other sounds like this is what the person is experiencing.
You may disagree with that distinction. That’s fine. Reasonable people can.
Years ago, a speaker at a conference said something I’ve never forgotten: homelessness may be the only condition where you’re labeled for what you don’t have and criminalized for trying to survive it.
That’s what a label can do. It stops describing a circumstance and starts justifying how we treat the person in it.
Either way, we should at least acknowledge what lawyers learn very quickly: language shapes perception.
Long before people evaluate facts, they are often responding to a story that the words have already begun telling.
That’s why I chuckle a little when someone accuses lawyers of making too much of terminology.
Of course we do.
Words are how evidence is presented.
Words are how arguments are framed.
Words are how jurors understand instructions.
Words are how laws are written.
Words are how rights are protected.
And words are how people are either granted dignity or quietly stripped of it.
The older I get, the less patience I have for the phrase “they’re just words.”
Words can remind us of a person’s humanity.
And words can make us forget it.
So yes, lawyers argue about words.
Some of us were trained to.
The truth is, everyone else argues about words too. Lawyers are just honest enough to admit we’re doing it.
