201 UTU: FINDING A BALANCE FOR THE LEGAL MƖORI DICTIONARY Tai Ahu,* Rachael Hoare** and MƗmari Stephens*** This article describes the authors' experience of attempting to confine the word utu to a list of distinct, Western legal glosses. The article highlights the complexity involved in drafting a comprehensive legal dictionary entry for utu that achieves an appropriate balance between the traditional customary meanings and Western legal meanings. I INTRODUCTION: THE LEGAL MƖORI PROJECT Since the arrival of Europeans in Aotearoa, the MƗori language has played an important role in communicating a wide range of Western legal concepts. Te reo MƗori was used frequently by MƗori themselves, often to voice their concerns about Crown acquisition of land. Colonial governments, institutions and Crown representatives also used MƗori in official correspondence and other documentation dating from circa 1828. Despite the widespread historical use of MƗori in various political and legal contexts, there has been little study of the MƗori terms used in such discourse and the manner of their use. The Legal MƗori Project ("Project") began in early 2007 at the Faculty of Law at Victoria University of Wellington to explore the historical and contemporary use of MƗori in Western legal discourse. This project aims to create a dictionary of legal MƗori terms, submitted for publication in early 2012. The dictionary is to be constructed by researching legal terms identified in our corpus of * Tai Ahu (nō Waikato) is Assistant Lecturer in Law at Victoria University of Wellington and a research assistant for the Legal MƗori Project. ** Rachael Hoare (NgƗti PƗkehƗ) is a research assistant for the Legal MƗori Project and an assistant Crown Counsel with the Crown Law Office. *** MƗmari Stephens (Te Rarawa) is a Lecturer in law at the Faculty of Law at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and co-leader of The Legal MƗori Project. The Project is co-led by Dr Mary Boyce from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.