A litigant is a person or party involved in a lawsuit, either suing or being sued. A litigator is the lawyer who specialises in handling court cases on someone's behalf. Remember it this way: the litigant is in the dispute, the litigator argues it.
The core difference
A litigant is a party to a lawsuit, while a litigator is the lawyer who represents a party in court.
- litigant — a party suing or being sued: Both litigants presented their evidence to the judge.
- litigator — a lawyer who specialises in court cases: She hired an experienced litigator to handle the contract dispute.
How to tell them apart
A simple test is to ask who is actually named in the lawsuit. If it is the person with something at stake, the claimant or the defendant, that is the litigant. If it is the professional they hired to argue the case, that is the litigator.
The confusion tends to surface in news reports and legal explainers, where both words appear near each other and the endings, -ant for the party and -or for the professional, are easy to swap without a careful read.
