Legal English Course med Kevin Harris
Ønsker du bedre ferdigheter i juridisk engelsk? Mange advokatfirmaer savner kompetanse innen juridisk engelsk blant jurister.
ELSA Bergen arrangerer for første gang kurs i Legal English 3. og 4.april. Kurset vil holdes av Kevin Harris fra Acorn English Consultants. Han har tidligere holdt kurset for flere anerkjente advokatfirmaer og ved UiT og UiO.
Kurset vil bestå av to deler: Writing Modern Legal English og Drafting Contracts in Modern English. Formålet er å gi en grunnleggende innføring i juridisk engelsk. Dette er relevant både i forhold til utveksling og arbeidslivet senere.
Det vil være en deltakeravgift på 100 kr. Alle deltakerne mottar et kursbevis som kan legges ved CV’en og lunsj fra Godt Brød begge dager. Obligatorisk oppmøte.
Tidsplan:
Torsdag 3.april:
12.15-14.15 – Writing Modern Legal English
14.15-14.45 – Matpause
14.45-16.45 – Writing Modern Legal English
Fredag 4.april:
10.15-12.15 – Drafting Contracts in Modern English
12.15-12.45 – Matpause
12.45-14.45 – Drafting Contracts in Modern English
Påmeldingen åpner onsdag 19.februar kl.12.00. Det er 50 plasser og førstemann til mølla-prinsippet gjelder! Påmelding sendes til julia.lorens@gmail.com. Deltakeravgiften betales innen en uke etter bekreftet plass.
Kurset krever ingen forkunnskaper innen juridisk engelsk og er beregnet for studenter på alle avdelinger.
Mer informasjon om kursets to deler:
Writing Modern Legal English
‘‘Too many lawyers believe that it is essential to legal English that one write as pompously as possible, using words and phrases that have long since disappeared from normal English discourse.’’ Hon. Antonin Scalia U.S. Supreme Court
A one-day seminar meant to help Scandinavian lawyers adapt to the recent and significant changes in the style of modern legal English.
Users of Legal English writers have split into two camps; old style and new style. Old style is the legal English used by our Grandfathers: noun-heavy, written in the passive voice, with lots of legal jargon; the style of Charles Dickens. Old style is condemned by all legal writing experts – “Unbearably, maddeningly, mind-numbingly pompous.” says Mark Fisher of the BBC.
New style is legal English as written in the modern commercial world. New style is supported by the English speaking judiciary, all the bar associations of the English speaking nations, associations whose purpose is to introduce clarity in legal writing, and influential legal writing experts such as Bryan Garner, David Daly and Kenneth Adams. New style is the style of Hemingway and Orwell – short, sharp, punchy and aggressive.
Course contents:
- Orwell’s six rules for writing and the KISS rule
- Recognising and eliminating tired old legal clichés
- Writing in the active voice
- Using as few words as possible
- Recognising archaic words, legal jargon and unnecessarily long words and replacing them with normal words as used by normal people
- Using verbs instead of nouns to bring dynamism to your writing
By the end of the seminar, the participants should have a healthy disrespect for the archaic legal language used by our grandfathers, and write in the clear, new style used by thoughtful professionals in the modern business and legal English world.
Drafting Contracts in Modern English
Modern English language contracts should be as plain, as clear and as concise as possible, say the Anglo Saxon bar associations, and judiciary. This one-day seminar is meant to help Scandinavian lawyers draft better contracts in English. The seminar is inspired by Kenneth Adams’ definitive contract drafting guide (A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting). The material is challenging, and participants should already be comfortable with high-level English as used in English contracts. This is a seminar on contract drafting, not contract law. The emphasis is entirely on the language of the contract – not the law.
The seminar will cover:
- Modal verbs in contracts – choosing the right modal verb to achieve the aim of the clause – and avoiding the wrong one
- Vagueness and ambiguity – how to use vagueness, and how to avoid ambiguity
- How to avoid clumsy legal jargon, and write in plain, clear English instead
- Drafting in the active voice, and the problems caused by passive voice clauses
- Avoiding wordiness – saying what you want to say as quickly as possible, and not unnecessarily repeating synonyms
- Avoiding archaic words and phrases, and replacing them with modern legal/business English, so the users of the contract can actually understand it
- How poor drafting can weaken a clause, or possibly even make it completely ineffective
- Typical mistakes made by Scandinavian contract drafters
- Many exercises in the dying art of drafting terms without the help of the office database (from your head)
- Many exercises in recognising poorly-written terms taken from the office database, and then editing them
By the end of the seminar, the participants should be able to recognise clumsily drafted terms and confidently rewrite them into clear, simple English.
Har du spørsmål om kurset, ta kontakt med Pernille på vpsc.bergen@elsa.no.
