One major frustration experienced by judiciary interpreters and translators has been the absence of appropriate linguistic/conceptual equivalents in Spanish for many common-law legal terms. A lengthy and in-depth term search produced three categories of Spanish equivalents: direct translations of the English terms, terms existing in criminal law of civil code countries which parallel those of the American system of common law, and lastly, newly coined terms, neologisms, for those common-law expressions which have no equivalent concept in civil code and therefore no existing Spanish linguistic form. This article will discuss one problematic and high frequency term which falls in the third category, the term "arraignment".