- pretrial - preceding an official trial; "pretrial publicity"; "pretrial hearings are usually for the purpose of clarifying facts and points of la"
Antonym: succeeding (indirect, via preceding)
- pretrial, pretrial conference - (law) a conference held before the trial begins to bring the parties together to outline discovery proceedings and to define the issues to be tried; more useful in civil than in criminal cases
--1 is a kind of conference, group discussion