In this article it is argued that any terminological resources providing information on combinability of terms should take into account a genre or genres in which a given term appears. The author aims to link 'restricted combinability in legal language' with genre. The study is based on a subcorpus of contract law taken from a 3-million-word corpus covering a range of legal subdomains and genres. The genres investigated in relation to the chosen domain are contracts, judgements, text books and reports. The author's analysis of the phraseology of the legal term/concept of 'consideration' - a kind of compensation or recompense - reveals examples of genre-specific patterning.