An education body hopes the first Maori legal dictionary will encourage fluent te reo speakers to take up law as a career.
He Papakupu Reo Ture is being officially launched on Wednesday with the hope that it will cut down on conflict and miscommunication between Maori and English speakers in the justice system.
The dictionary has been a five-year project for a team of about 48 people at Victoria University.
The roopu trawled through eight million words gathered from legal documents from 1828 to 2009 to collate the dictionary.
One of the authors, Mamari Stephens, says there has never been a central document for Maori legal terms.
Ms Stephens says the aim is to encourage Maori speakers who practice law to write, teach and talk about law in te reo, and draft agreements in it.
Ako Aotearoa senior Maori development manager Ngahiwi Apanui expects the Papakupu to be a great resource for students coming out of kura kaupapa.
He says it's a small step along the way for those who have high proficiency in Te Reo Maori to operate in a more bilingual setting.
