The <i>Corpus of Contemporary English Legal Decisions, 1950–2021 (CoCELD)</i>: A new tool for analysing recent changes in English legal discourse

Abstract Legal discourse is widely assumed to be resistant change, and indeed legislative documents are extremely conservative with fixed formulaic structures. However, recent research has shown that changes can observed in the lexico-grammatical features of some legal when examined diachronically, particularly since emergence 1970s Plain Language Movement, which sought draw attention unnecessary complexity official language, this including discourse. Despite crucial language years, direction scarce date, British English variety, probably due, part, shortage specialised corpora allow kind studies. In order bridge gap, we have embarked on compilation Corpus Contemporary Decisions, 1950–2021 (CoCELD), a corpus judicial decisions produced between 1950 2021. paper present structure characteristics CoCELD, as well methodology used for its compilation. The new corpus, was released February 2022, contains sample texts roughly 2,500 words each year from 2021, adds up more than 730,000 words. files raw text POS-annotation, freely available community under signed consent. With CoCELD hope contribute new, useful resource linguists an interest both synchronic diachronic perspective.