Words / L / Law

lay a foundation

verb

B1CEFR level
38/100Rarity: fairly common
TechnicalRegister

To establish the preliminary facts that render a subsequent piece of evidence admissible.

You can't put the ledger in until you lay a foundation through someone who actually kept it.

Similar: lay the groundwork

Topic: Evidence & procedure in Legal English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More law words: Evidence & procedure