Georgetown Legal English Blog – Page 7 – Teaching and learning at the intersection of U.S. law and the English language

“The Language of Analogy” with Tashkent State University of Law

Post by Stephen Horowitz, Professor of Legal English

I want to thank Senior Teacher Munisa Mirgiyazova and her colleagues and students at Tashkent State University of Law for inviting me again to present via Zoom to their law students yesterday. (I presented last December on the topic of the benefits of extensive reading and listening.) This May 11 presentation was titled “The Language of Analogy.” (link to Google Slides), and I greatly enjoyed the questions and discussion and look forward to future collaborations with TSUL.

The presentation discussed the role of analogy in US legal writing and argumentation within the US common law legal system. And then it focused on the language patterns and parts of language used in 1) comparison and contrast, and 2) categorization.

Master of Laws Interviews Project Season 1: Episode 7: How did a LinkedIn influencer secure his externship at BigLaw?

Posted by Yi Song

How did a LinkedIn influencer secure his externship at BigLaw?

Pushkar Keshavmurthy, a LinkedIn influencer before he even set foot in law school, is the third-generation lawyer in his family. He’s dedicated to establish a career in international arbitration.

How did he jump start on building his professional network before he even set foot on the U.S. soil?

How did being a LinkedIn influencer help him land his externship at King & Spalding?

How did he demonstrate to his future employer that his previous experience add value to the firm?

Subscribe to the LinkedIn weekly newsletter to receive FREE insider tips. Read Pushkar’s story here.

Criminal Procedure….in Legal Spanish?

Post by Stephen Horowitz, Professor of Legal English

In the second semester of our Legal English course at Georgetown Law in the Two-Year LLM Program, we focus on criminal procedure cases. More specifically, Miranda rights including the concepts of custody and interrogation.

This Saturday Night Live comedy sketch seems to be a unique example that somehow sits at the intersection of criminal procedure, language learning, and humor, parodying the way many of us “learned” Spanish in school growing up in the US. And really, parodying the way many of us learned any language in school growing up. Enjoy!

How do LLM students improve their legal English?

Post by Stephen Horowitz, Professor of Legal English

I’m an experienced legal English teacher. Or at least I think I am. But how much do I really know about how LLM students (and other foreign-trained lawyers and law students) learn and improve their legal English? Probably not as much as the students and lawyers themselves.

This post is to try and help gather information directly from real learners about what has helped them learn and improve their legal English.

Questions

For any current, former or future LLM students and/or for any foreign-trained lawyer or law student who has ever tried to improve their legal English

1. What kinds of things have been most helpful to you in improving your legal English? For example, what strategies or tricks or adjustments or approaches? Our courses? Or books or podcasts? Or anything else in particular that you’d like to mention?

2. What, if anything, has not been helpful?

3. Of the helpful things, did they help more with the “legal” or more with the “English”?

4. What advice or suggestions or recommendations would you make for others trying to improve their legal English?

Please post your responses in the comments below. Or, if you prefer, you’re welcome to email your thoughts to me at sh1643@georgetown.edu and I can post them anonymously for you.

Video: “Some new-ish thoughts on post-pandemic Online Legal English (OLE)”

Post by Stephen Horowitz, Professor of Legal English

Following up on the recent post “Georgetown Legal English at the 2023 ILEAC Annual Conference,” here is a link to the video of the presentation by Daniel Edelson and me on the topic “Some new-ish thoughts on post-pandemic Online Legal English (OLE.)” In it, we shared some examples of OLE models and content from the Georgetown Online Legal English course as well as from the St. John’s Law OLE course and the USLawEssentials’ OLE courses.

Video Links

Below are three different links to the same video (so you have multiple options in case one doesn’t work for some reason.)

Presentation Summary

Master of Laws Interviews Project Season 1: Episode 6: How did a multilingual professional dancer find her calling in public interest law?

Posted by Yi Song

Gabriela Rendon
Staff Attorney at Gender Equality Law Center

How did a multilingual professional dancer find her calling in public interest law?

Gabriela Rendon, Esq. first came to the U.S. to pursue her career as a professional dancer with Martha Graham School in New York City. Fluent in English, Spanish and French, she studied law in Argentina and France. Eventually she found her calling in public interest law at Gender Equality Law Center.

How did she turn her post-graduate fellowship into a permanent position?

How did she find a career that enables her to do impactful and meaningful work?

Why is it important for lawyers to keep a creative outlet?

Subscribe to the LinkedIn weekly newsletter to receive FREE insider tips. Read Gabriela’s story here.

Cultural knowledge & LLMs: “Clerks:

Post by Stephen Horowitz, Professor of Legal English

My 2-Year LLM Program Legal English colleagues Prof. Ben Cheng and Prof. John Dundon and I have been “doing” legal English for a good while now. We know how to speak, write, and generally communicate in culturally sensitive and appropriate ways. We know how to grade our speech for multilingual learners. And it’s second nature to adjust our communications to factor in or address any potential gaps in our students’ US cultural knowledge.

But we still make mistakes.

The latest comes from the big issue-spotter question on the spring final exam for our students. The topic was criminal procedure. More specifically, Miranda rights and when a person is “in custody” and when a police officer is subjecting an individual to “interrogation.”

Master of Laws Interviews Project Season 1: Episode 5: Eve Perez Torres – How did Sofia Vergara inspire her to embrace who she is as an international lawyer?

Posted by Yi Song

How did Sofia Vergara inspire her to embrace who she is as an international lawyer?

Eve Perez Torres moved to the U.S. from Colombia and started law school at the age of 34. She studied part time while raising a child. Today she is the Senior Attorney at FedEx working on legal and regulatory matters with counsels from around the world.

How did she land your first law job in the U.S.?

How did Sofia Vergara inspire her to embrace who she is as a lawyer?

What is it like to work in the in-house legal department for a multinational corporation?

Subscribe to the LinkedIn weekly newsletter to receive FREE insider tips. Read Eve’s story here.

Georgetown Legal English at the 2023 ILEAC Annual Conference

Post by Stephen Horowitz, Professor of Legal English

Yesterday, Day 1 of the annual International Legal Education Abroad and LLM Administrators’ Conference hosted by American University Washington College of Law, Georgetown Law was represented on three different panels.

1. Craig Hoffman, founder of Georgetown Law’s 2-Year LLM Program (the first such program to exist), participated in a panel discussion titled “The Emergence of the Two-Year LLM: A Promising Alternative for Non-JD Law Programs” together with Ashley Sim (USC), Gabrielle Goodwin (Indiana University), and Rebecca Pendleton (Boston University.) The discussion, moderated by Prof. Pendleton, addressed the benefits and challenges of 2-Year LLM programs as well as changes over time.

2. Andrea Rodriguez Escobedo, Director of LLM Programs at Georgetown Law, presented on “Higher bar passage rate to attract more LL.M candidates: How can Law Schools help LL.M students pass a bar examination in the US?” A former Columbia LLM student herself, Andrea shared her and others’ research on LLM bar success and delved into the possible causes as well as potential solutions for support.

3. Stephen Horowitz, Professor of Legal English at Georgetown Law, together with Daniel Edelson, Director of Academic Success at Seton Hall Law and founder of USLawEssentials, gave a presentation titled “Some new-ish thoughts on post-pandemic Online Legal English (OLE.)” In it, we shared some examples of OLE content from the Georgetown Online Legal English course as well as from the St. John’s Law OLE course and the USLawEssentials’ OLE courses.

In particular, we focused on an approach we’ve been using called the “interactive textbook” model, which is a term we created to capture the feel of an asynchronous course that is set up sequentially and can be used as a self-guided course, but can also just as easily function as the text for an instructor-led course.

Master of Laws Interviews Project Season 1: Episode 3: Xin Tao – How did he make it to the top at BigLaw as a non-native English speaker?

Posted by Yi Song

Before Xin made partner at Baker McKenzie, he could not find many role models who have the exact same background as his. He moved to the U.S. from China in his early twenties to pursue a graduate degree in biochemistry. He was increasingly disillusioned about the scientific research he was doing. One day, he was studying in the library with a friend, who was studying for the LSAT. It all started with a joke about whether Xin would be able to beat his friend on the test. Xin ended up going to law school and the rest is history.

By now you have probably read the Paul Hasting’s presentation on the non-negotiable expectations for junior associates, what does a BigLaw partner think of that? How did Xin find his first job in the U.S. leveraging the alum network at Georgetown Law? How did he survive and thrive at BigLaw? What are the challenges he faced as a non-native English speaker and how did he overcome it? How does he develop meaningful relationships with colleagues and clients?

Subscribe to the LinkedIn weekly newsletter to receive FREE insider tips from Xin. Read Xin’s story here.