If I'm So Smart, Why Is Legal English So Hard?

If you are reading this article, you are most likely a legal professional, which means you are also smart. Your English proficiency level is never a reflection of your intelligence. Your legal education bespeaks a mind that analyzes issues critically and that logically applies the law to everyday situations. However, in spite of all of this rationalization, you can still be imaginative enough to push the envelope of logical premise to its most imaginative extreme.

So, it's not that you are NOT smart. Rather, as an attorney or paralegal you are regularly called upon to complete difficult assignments that lay people would otherwise find extremely daunting. You accomplish these assignments successfully even though you struggle with English at work. Consider the list of tasks (see below) you accomplish on a typical day, and you will never doubt your level of aptitude. Rather, you will objectively conclude that Legal English for a non native English speaker is extremely difficult, plain and simple. Once you come to this realization, you will no longer doubt your ability to overcome the challenges you face with Legal English. Consequently, your confidence level will increase. This newfound self-assurance will contribute to your success as a professional who can competently practice law in a non native tongue.

Some of the things you do at the firm or company office are:

• reading contracts and providing comments and amendments to same;
• interpreting law and the most up to date legal regulations;
• communicating with fellow lawyers;
• simplifying complicated legal subject matter for clients to understand; and,
• thinking in English for the time you are at your office even though you are not using the language regularly outside of working hours;

And you do all this no matter your level of English proficiency!

A content based Legal English program has its merits and subject matter should be interwoven with skills training, but it is not the primary focus. Wherever you attended law school globally, you learned the content, the theory, and the repercussions as well as consequences associated with the law. But, as a legal professional, you grapple with grammar points and syntactical structures that a General English student never needs to face nor process or produce. Further, you are reading and interpreting text in the form of contracts, fine print, and statutes that even a native English speaking lay person does not understand.

Whether engaged in conversation or legal writing, you are being confronted with a level of language sophistication that the ordinary person does not need to use. For example, you have to understand highly specific lexis such as terms of art, obscure words, words that have a different meaning in General English, foreign words, Latin words and phrases, reference words, and collocations. You need to speak and read complex morphology in the forms of various prefixes, suffixes, compounds, pronouns, participles, articles with specific use, and determiners with specific use. Lastly, the syntax is highly sophisticated in Legal English consisting of complex formal phrases, prepositional phrases, participle clauses, modal verbs and expressions, infinitive clauses, and cross-reference markers.

It is never too late to compensate for an otherwise poor Legal English training in law school. The ideal program consists of one-on-one coaching from a lawyer by profession with legal practice and a qualified English Language teacher who has earned multiple certifications in teaching general English and English for a Specific Purpose (commonly referred to as ESP) in areas such as business or law. Additionally, the coach should have practical experience as a teacher possibly holding a professional license. A coach with such a resume may use a text book as guidance, but will mostly rely on professional training and instinct to customize a Legal English program for students. Legal English can be an area of linguistics that treads turbulent waters and its survival hangs on traditional teaching methodologies, but more importantly, unconventional skills training.

My coaching acumen is the culmination of over twenty years' experience as a lawyer and teacher. I am passionate about transmitting and sharing my knowledge with others who may be struggling professionally. As the child of non native English speaking immigrant parents in the US who were also professionals, I wholeheartedly empathize with the struggles you face with language both personally and professionally.

Why not book a free strategy session with me today to find out more about the services I offer?