Latin will also enable you to cut through the thicket of alien vocabulary used by the legal and medical professions. Initially, Latin was used in both fields because, for hundreds of years, the universal language (the lingua franca) of learning and scholarship in Western Europe was — you guessed it! — Latin. Even after Latin stopped serving this function, much of the terminology used by lawyers and physicians had already been established. Of course, more cynical observers might argue that those two professions continue to use Latin in order to keep ordinary people mystified. Your newly gained knowledge will allow you to escape from this state of mystification. For example, you can now probably figure out the following legal terms/phrases:

• Amicus curiae (friend of the court)

• Ex post factī (from after the fact)

• Habeās corpus (you may have the body)

• In locī parentis (in the place of a parent)

• Nī lī contendere (I don't want to fight)

• Nīn compos mentis (not having full control of the mind)

Having some context would help you decipher the exact meanings of the terms above, but you can certainly get their gist.