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jailhouse lawyer

jailhouse lawyer noun: a person incarcerated in a prison, jail, etc., who has acquired significant knowledge of the justice system and who is able to represent himself in some legal proceedings and to provide legal advice to other prisoners.

Noun

jailhouse lawyer (plural jailhouse lawyers)

  1. (informal) A person incarcerated in a prison, jail, etc., who has acquired significant knowledge of the justice system and who is able to represent himself in some legal proceedings and to provide legal advice to other prisoners.
    • As something of a jailhouse lawyer, he has gathered affidavits attesting to abusive treatment by guards at the center, informed detainees of their legal rights and helped them write letters of appeal.1994 June 11, Alisa Solomon, “The Prison on Varick Street”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 11 Mar 2016, retrieved 19 Nov 2012
    • Once there, he became a jailhouse lawyer, filing complaints about everything from prison food to his attorneys.2001 June 24, David S. Jackson, “Murder Most Foul”, in TIME, archived from the original on 14 Apr 2016

Forms of jailhouse lawyer

pluraljailhouse lawyers

Questions about jailhouse lawyer

What does jailhouse lawyer mean?
Jailhouse lawyer means a person incarcerated in a prison, jail, etc., who has acquired significant knowledge of the justice system and who is able to represent himself in some legal proceedings and to provide legal advice to other prisoners.
What part of speech is jailhouse lawyer?
Jailhouse lawyer is a noun.
What is the plural of jailhouse lawyer?
The plural of jailhouse lawyer is jailhouse lawyers.

Words near jailhouse lawyer in the dictionary

  1. jailerships
  2. jailfodder
  3. jailful
  4. jailfuls
  5. jailhouse
  6. jailhouse lawyer
  7. jailhouse lawyers
  8. jailhouses
  9. jailing
  10. jailings
  11. jailish

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jailhouse lawyer (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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