English for lawyers

Audience

• Lawyers in private practice
• Lawyers in banks and financial institutions
• Lawyers working in industry and government
• Anyone working in a legal environment, including legal secretaries and paralegal support staff

Skills Gained

• Tuition will be given in small groups for the greater benefit of each delegate
• Thorough pre-course testing ensures that each group contains participants with a similar level of English, thus guaranteeing maximum progress in the shortest possible time
• Teaching will be conducted in an informal style and will include case studies, workshops, role-plays and individual tasks. Above all, the sessions will be practical and interactive.

Course Outline

PART 1 - BACKGROUND

The English legal system

• An introduction to the English legal system
• The sources of English law and its methodology
• Common law and statute law
• Common law and civil law systems compared
• The English court system

Forming a company

• Legal persons
• Partnership
• Limited companies
• The constitution of a company and its alteration
• Company directors and corporate governance

English contract law - the basics

• Offer
• Acceptance
• Consideration
• Consensus ad idem

PART 2 - VOCABULARY

Legal and commercial English

• Key legal terminology
• Typical terms and phrases
• Legal grammar
• Financial and business terminology
• Business phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions

PART 3 - LEGAL TOPICS

• Recent developments in national and international laws
• Effects of international laws, treaties and conventions
• Company law
• different commercial vehicles
• choosing the right structure
• share-holdings
• voting rights
• formation
• Joint ventures - negotiating the detail behind a joint venture project
• Contracts - negotiating and drafting parts of a commercial agreement (e.g. distribution)
• Corporate finance
• looking at different types of finance
• negotiating and structuring bank loans etc
• Mergers and acquisitions
• cross border merger and aqusition transactions

PART 4 - FUNCTIONS

Meetings

• Introductions - self, clients, colleagues and the firm
• Eliciting information
• Presenting a balanced argument
• Asking and responding to questions of a legal and commercial nature
• Presenting options
• Expressing an opinion regarding a case or legal problem
• Agreeing and disagreeing
• Summarising and concluding

Telephoning

• Standard English phrases
• Exchanging information and asking for clarification
• Key vocabulary

PART 5 - SKILL AREAS

The following skills will be developed extensively during this module of the course:

Language

• Reading to extract precise information
• Reading for gist
• Listening to extract specific details
• Speaking with precision in a limited time
• Pronunciation: individual problem sounds and word stress

Writing

• Writing skills: professional correspondence and note taking
• Achieving clarity in writing letters, e-mails, memos, reports

Negotiating

• Key structures
• Vocabulary
• Techniques in legal negotiation

Giving advice

• Advising on and explaining legal concepts, results and consequences, procedures

Drafting

• Basic principles of good drafting
• Clear structure
• Plain language
• Clarity and precision
• Avoiding ambiguity

PART 6 - CONTRACT DRAFTING

Delegates will study, negotiate and draft a commercial agreement