New Students and Some Useful Resources

Good news for the school. Three enthusiastic lawyers have just signed up for a short programme of learning Legal English. They are interesting and interested, the two qualities above all that make teaching enjoyable. A bonus, for me, is that they are public interest lawyers so my area of speciality is going to be particularly useful. For more about public interest law have a look at the PILI website: http://www.pili.org/



On another note, many thanks to Jeremy Day for posting his tip for making a vocabulary exercise with tables (see http://specific-english.blogspot.com/2009/10/vocabulary-revision-with-table-and.html ). I needed a quick exercise to assess the vocabulary of my three new clients and, using Jeremy's idea I made up a word matching kit much more quickly than I imagined. It was very successful with the clients and, at least in part, persuaded them sign up.

Looking for a quick source of legal expressions, I came across some free guides at http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/ including a glossary of legal terms. Incidentally, another useful resource is http://www.write-better-english.com/better-legal-writing.aspx

Language of Law Conference

Here, a little later than I had intended, is something about City University London’s Language of the Law conference in association with Taylor Wessing and The English Project that I attended on 13th October. Other than to say how interesting it was and what a pleasure it was to catch up with my old friend, Professor Chris Mulvey, I can do no better than to post the link to the City University's page, which includes a video of all of the speakers. If you have time I thoroughly recommend watching/listening to it.

http://www.city.ac.uk/whatson/2009/10_oct/131009_languageoflaw.html

The friendly world of legal English

Just a quick note before I go to the airport: I am rapidly discovering that there is a very supportive group of fellow teachers of legal English, many of them in Europe. I've added some of the blog addresses below. In this competetive world it is a pleasure to see how people in this field are not at all jealous of their ideas and materials - I'd mention in particular Jeremy Day at http://specific-english.blogspot.com/ who has just been kind enough to mention this blog in his latest post. When I get back from the UK I shall be following Jeremy's lead and doing a post on available blogs and other useful links that might be of use to other practitioners

English Language Day

I'm off to London for a series of events to mark English Language Day. The following from http://www.englishproject.org/ explains all:

On 13 October 2009, the English Project will be coordinating the first ever English Language Day to celebrate one of the wonders of the world, the English Language. We hope it will be the first of many such annual events. Amazingly, although English is spoken by some 2 billion people on the planet, there is no day in the calendar when we can celebrate its full glory. Now there is. 13 October.

We have chosen this date because it was on 13 October 1362 that the Chancellor of England for the first time opened Parliament with a speech in English. In that same Parliament, a Statute of Pleading was approved that permitted members in debate to use the English language. It had become again an official language of law and law-making.

Because of this connection with law-making, our theme this year is the language of law in its widest sense. The English Project’s contribution to the Day will be three events hosted by London law firm Taylor Wessing, for schools, for university law students and for the public on our central theme.

I shall be going to all three language of law events and will follow up with an item on the blog next week.

The journey begins

Everything has to start somewhere and a new law school is no exception. I had not imagined that I would begin to accept students until absolutely everything was in place; website, stationery, registration with TOLES, advertisements in legal publications and so on. All of those things are on the way but already I have lawyers asking for lessons. So far I have accepted them for one-to-one sessions based on their needs and it seems to be going well (at least, they keep coming back!) I have had another enquiry today so all looks well for the future.

I have always believed that the best form of advertising is personal recommendation; if the product is good enough people will tell their friends about it.

Professional and Legal English at Anglaw Kft., Budapest's Language School for Lawyers

What Anglaw offers

Anglaw aims to give its delegates the opportunity to:

Practise and develop their professional and legal vocabulary in English;

To increase fluency and confidence in using English in professional and legal contexts;

To enable participants to identify their own language learning needs with a view to continued English language development after the course.

Topics are determined according to the needs of delegates and might include aspects of:

Hungarian, EU and UK legal systems;

Case law;

Company law;

Contract law, particularly in relation to insurance contracts;

Financial Regulation in different jurisdictions.


Anglaw’s approach to teaching and learning

The school focuses on developing and practising reading and speaking skills through cooperative task-based work in pairs or small groups.

Delegates read and discuss legal material in order to exchange information and compare aspects of their own legal systems.

Delegates will also be given opportunities for more individual work, such as preparing and giving a short talk or presenting a summary of a legal case.


Anglaw courses include the following activities

Presentation of specialist vocabulary by lecturer;

Vocabulary building exercises;

Reading and discussion of legal text, including case reports;

Giving short presentations on legal topics;

Written tasks.

If you would like to find out more then please email anglawbp@gmail.com

Budapest's Language School for Lawyers

I've spent much of the summer feeling that I ought to be paying more attention to the task of setting up Budapest's first language school for lawyers owned and run by native English speakers who are also legally qualified. A few days after August 20th, the national holiday that in the minds of Hungarians spells the end of summer, Budapest is bursting with creative energy. From no activity to overload in a just a few days. For the last week friends and colleagues have been ringing, emailing and sending me messages on Facebook, all offering help, support, ideas and suggestions. I cannot believe how lucky I am to be living and starting a business in such a fantastic place.

This blog will be a mixture of reflections on the joys (or otherwise) of getting the language school off the ground and, as time goes on, tips, ideas, topical items, and so on that might be of help to language teachers and students, particularly those whose work or study includes the law and all things legalistic. Welcome!