Tag: Best Legal English

Updates from the Georgetown Legal English Faculty (December 2024)

Post by Stephen Horowitz, Lecturer of Legal English

Here’s what the Georgetown Legal English faculty have been up to since the end of summer 2024. (Click here to see previous Updates from the Legal English Faculty.)

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Heather Weger & Julie Lake

Prof. Julie Lake (left) and Prof. Heather Weger (right)

The end of the semester is upon us! This fall, we were thrilled to welcome a stellar group of students to the Two-Year LLM Program. 

Fall Projects

Reinvigorated from presenting at the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) Biennial Conference in Indianapolis in July, we split our curricular energy in the reiterative cycle of refining our Fundamentals of Legal Writing course (a course that helps multilingual legal writers develop an authoritative voice for the genre of legal memo writing) and designing a new course, Academic Legal English I (a course that provides multilingual law students with opportunities to develop speaking and networking skills useful for navigating law school and the legal profession). 

Beyond the classroom, we continued making progress with many other professional projects, including a monthly working group with Ukrainian linguists teaching in the law context, planning a writing retreat for colleagues at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in AY 2025-2026, and drafting a book proposal on writing instruction for multilingual law students.

Spring Projects

We look forward to the spring semester with the Two-Year LL.M. program! We will be offering Fundamentals of Legal Writing II (a course that focuses on the scholarly writing genre), and Academic Legal English II (a course that engages students in experiential learning to enhance their oral communication skills, grammar skills, and professional language skills).

We also look forward to presenting at the TESOL International Convention and Expo in March 2025 in Long Beach, CA. We will be presenting theories and practices that will appear in our upcoming book.

Winter Break

We each plan to spend the holiday season with friends and loved ones. Professor Lake will travel to the Boston area, and Professor Weger will stay in Virginia. We wish you a healthy and restful winter break!

Ben Cheng

Prof. Cheng taught both Legal English I and Professional Responsibility during the fall. He is looking forward to teaching Legal English II as well as a new Negotiations course for LLM students for which he consulted with Barrie Roberts, founder of Mediation as a Second Language and author of The “Getting to Yes” Guide for ESL Students and Professionals.

John Dundon

Professor Dundon taught two very different, but closely related, courses this semester. The first was a section of U.S. Legal, Research, Analysis & Writing in the Two-Year LL.M. Program, a course which introduces our multilingual law students to the three very different tasks of performing U.S. legal research, creating legal arguments based on case law, and presenting this research and analysis in a polished legal memorandum that meets the expectations of a U.S. legal audience.

Professor Dundon also taught Introduction to the U.S. Legal System, a large survey class that included all students from the Two-Year LL.M. Program, as well as foreign-trained students in Georgetown Law’s general LL.M. program who wish to qualify for the New York bar exam. This class was designed to answer the broad and somewhat esoteric question of “How does the U.S. legal system work?” Rather than focusing on any particular area of substantive law, this class touched on the structure of the U.S. government and the limits of federal power, the tools that courts use to interpret statutes and prior case law, and the ways in which federal and state courts often must interpret the law of other jurisdictions (i.e., federal courts interpreting state law, and vice versa), among other topics.

As different as these courses may appear at first glance, they were intimately connected. Understanding how U.S. courts do their job is a necessary precondition to understanding the relative weight of sources of U.S. law and how these sources are used to make legal arguments. And understanding how U.S. lawyers craft their legal arguments, in turn, helps students anticipate what to look for when reading all of the cases that they have been assigned for homework in their various classes.

When he wasn’t teaching (or being a dad) this semester, Professor Dundon also completed and defended his dissertation proposal in furtherance of his doctoral studies in Georgetown’s Linguistics Department. The working title of Professor Dundon’s dissertation is Intertextuality and Metadiscourse in U.S. Supreme Court Oral Arguments, and his study will investigate how sources of law are linguistically positioned as having formal authority in oral arguments at the Supreme Court. Among his dissertation committee members is Professor Marta Baffy of the University of Baltimore School of Law, a former faculty director in the Two-Year LL.M. Program at Georgetown Law.

Finally, Professor Dundon had a research article published this fall in the Journal of Pragmatics: “I think Gray is just against you there”: Intertextuality and personification in legal discourse. This study explores how parties in Supreme Court oral arguments (both attorneys and Justices) tend to personify the names of prior cases and animate them with human traits such as emotions and the power of speech. In the article, Professor Dundon posits that this personification is an information-management tool occurring in sequences of oral arguments that are particularly dense with references to case law. This is a strand of research that he hopes to revisit, in part, in his dissertation.

Stephen Horowitz

Georgetown Law

*Finished teaching Legal English I to the Two-Year LLM Program students, for what looks like it may be the final time. The course focused on a line of torts cases on the topic of negligence and helped students understand how to read and think about common law cases in the US legal system, and also how to organize an outline, think about hypotheticals, and write exam answers using an IRAC approach that connects discourse to writing moves, and writing moves to the language and grammar needed to execute those writing moves.

*Taught a section of US Legal Research & Writing for the LLM students in the Two-Year LLM Program. In addition to teaching the process of legal research, focused in particular on the discourse, writing moves, and language needed to execute the writing moves and discourse of legal memorandum writing.

Ukraine

*In November, began serving as a Visiting Professor of Legal English at the Kyiv-Mohyla Law School for the purpose of providing faculty training and curriculum development support. (Special thanks to Justice For All Ukraine’s Artem Shaipov for facilitating the relationship!)

*Initiated and helped organize a November 25, 2024 joint event on the law school campus titled, “Insider Perspectives on Atrocity Crimes Accountability in Ukraine,” hosted by Georgetown Law’s International Criminal Justice Initiative and by Truth Hounds, an independent Ukrainian organization focused in investigating war crime atrocities committed by Russia against Ukraine. The panel featured ICJI’s Christopher “Kip” Hale, who has been advising Ukraine’s Prosecutor General on the investigation and prosecution of war atrocities, and Volodymyr Hryshko, Legal Counsel for Truth Hounds, and Vladaslav Chyryk, Investigator for Truth Hounds, and was moderated by Professor Alan Blakley, Visiting Professor, Kyiv Mohyla Academy, Faculty of Law.

*Expanded weekly Legal English Conversation Zoom sessions from Ukrainian law faculty to Ukrainian law students. Recruited over 300 Ukrainian law students and over 100 US law students (and a few French law students) to participate. Approximately 40 of the US law students volunteered to host weekly Legal English Conversation Zoom sessions for the Ukrainian law students modeled on how I facilitate the sessions with Ukrainian law and legal English faculty. (Here’s a post on the Georgetown Legal English Blog with more information about this initiative, plus sign-up links for anyone else who would like to volunteer.)

*Helped law faculty from State Tax National University and Oles Gonchar Dnipro National University identify and connect with US law faculty for the purpose of providing lectures to the Ukrainian law schools on the topics of Rule of Law, Cybersecurity, Criminal Law, Search & Seizure Law, Election Law, Democracy, Legislation Process, System of Checks & Balances, Artificial Intelligence Regulations, Anti-Corruption Regulations and Political Corruption Regulations, among others.

Sri Lanka

*Over the winter break, visited Sri Lanka to lead Training of Trainer (TOT) workshops on legal English curriculum development for the University of Colombo and University of Jaffna in connection with USAID’s Efficient and Effective Justice (EEJ) Program in Sri Lanka. Similar to Ukraine, in Sri Lanka law schools are in the process of moving towards English-language-only curriculum.

Afghanistan

*In December, continued conducting assessments for former Afghan judges and lawyers in connection with the ABA Afghan Legal Professionals Scholarship & Mentoring Pilot Program. The assessment project is in collaboration with Prof. Daniel Edelson (Seton Hall/USLawEssentials.com) and Prof. Lindsey Kurtz (Penn State Law).

*Also, with Daniel Edelson and USLawEssentials, continued offering a free self-guided online Pre-LLM legal English program (i.e., Fundamentals of the US Legal System + Reading Cases + Legal Writing + Legal Listening) to help Afghan candidates prepare to start an LLM program at a US law school.

Japan

*In October/November, guest-lectured in three classes for the legal English course at Keio University Law School on the topics of Case Reading Strategies and the Language of Analogy.

Interestingly, the course came into existence at Keio thanks to a change in the date of the Japanese bar exam, which meant that students still have an additional semester of classes after they’ve completed the bar exam. As a result, there’s increased demand for Legal English among the students since they recognize the need for English and know that once they graduate and begin their legal training work, they will not have much time to study English. Special thanks to Profs. Masako Miyatake and Mindy Allen for the invite!

Assessment

*Thanks to a post on the Consortium on Graduate Communications (CGC) listserv, ended up piloting a new language assessment with a small cohort of Georgetown LLM students in collaboration with Sotiria Koui, founder of ELT Matters and creator of ALIGN Plus, “An online English language placement test for the academic needs of graduate students.”

Looking ahead to 2025….

*In the Spring 2025 semester, will be teaching Professional Responsibility for a section of LLM students, and Legal English II for the Two-Year LLM Program students. Legal English II will use as its primary materials a line of Criminal Procedure cases related to Miranda rights and help deepen their case reading and analysis skills.

*On January 15, 2025, will be the External Speaker for the European Legal English Teachers’ Association (EULETA) external speaker series event titled, “Legal English in US Law Schools: Meeting the needs of international LLM students.” [Click here for more information and to register for this event.]

*In June, 2025 will teach the Legal Writing course for the Southwestern Institute for International and Comparative Law’s annual Academy for international lawyers. This will be the 60th year of its Academy.

*Will start to develop new Online Legal English (OLE) courses to be made available to Georgetown Law students as well as to learners outside of Georgetown.

*Working on developing a Rule of Law legal English course, thanks to support and materials from University of Arkansas Law Professor Christopher Kelley.

Updates from the Georgetown Legal English Faculty (September 2024)

Post by Stephen Horowitz, Lecturer of Legal English

Here’s what the Georgetown Legal English faculty have been up to since the end of the spring 2024 semester….

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Ben Cheng

Returning from parental leave, Prof. Cheng is set to teach sections of Legal English I and Professional Responsibility this fall. Additionally, he is working on a new Legal English Negotiations curriculum for the spring 2025 semester.

John Dundon

Professor Dundon had a busy summer, which started with his teaching an Advanced Contract Drafting class to LL.M. students at IE Law School in Madrid, Spain. It was his fifth summer teaching at IE Law, and he always feels very honored to be there – the school community is very welcoming, and the students themselves are always extremely impressive.

Next, Professor Dundon presented his research at two linguistics conferences in the United Kingdom: the i-Mean 7 Conference on Meaning in Social Interaction in Bristol, and then the 5th European Conference of the International Association for Forensic & Legal Linguistics in Birmingham. His first presentation was an explanation of procedural and evidentiary rules in U.S. trials that can affect linguistic analysis of trial testimony.  The second presentation summarized Professor Dundon’s recent research about how U.S. Supreme Court Justices and attorneys at oral arguments sometimes speak “on behalf” of institutions and clients, and how this phenomenon manifests in linguistic features.

Professor Dundon then spent a month in Taiwan, teaching Contract Drafting in English to law students at the National Chengchi University College of Law and practicing attorneys at the Taipei Bar Association. It was one of his largest-ever classes (over 100 students), and Professor Dundon learned an incredible amount about the Taiwanese legal system from his students. He’s been invited back for a similar program next year and hopes to expand the course offerings to cover additional material.

Finally, Professor Dundon taught U.S. Legal Research, Analysis & Writing in Georgetown Law’s Summer Experience Program for entering LL.M. students.

Heather Weger & Julie Lake

It is hard to believe that the summer is almost over! We have several personal and professional highlights to share.

Prof. Julie Lake (left) and Prof. Heather Weger (right)

Vacations & Family Time

Since our last blog post, we took time to relax with our respective families. 

Professor Julie Lake spent much of the summer with family and friends in Cape May (New Jersey), Chapel Hill  (North Carolina), and Philadelphia (Pennsylvania). Though the sun was in full force in Cape May (aka, the “beach”), the jellyfish prevented her from swimming in the ocean. (It is hard to conquer these lifelong fears!) She was able to spend time with her husband and daughter, watching movies and TV shows about unicorns, playing her guitar, and completing kid-friendly art projects. 

Professor Heather Weger traveled to Chicago (Illinois) and Richmond (Virginia) to visit her husband’s family), and she spent time with her Mom (from Arkansas) and sister (from North Carolina) as they visited her here in DC. She also spent a week at the beach (North Carolina), binge watching the Olympics, collecting sea shells with her children, and catching up on pleasure reading. Reconnecting with family always brings a renewed sense of identity and energy! 

Summer Projects

Between family trips and vacations, we have continued to refine our asset-based approach to teaching Legal English. Specifically, we presented at the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) Biennial Conference in Indianapolis in July. In our presentation, “Linguists in Law School: Rebooting Legal Education to Empower Multilingual Law Students,” we highlighted the value that multilingual law students bring to law school and showed effective pedagogical strategies to enhance their Legal English. We also enjoyed the presentations we attended, and we came away with practices ratified (e.g., mindfulness of cultural and linguistic references in teaching), new practices introduced (e.g., a new approach to cultivating creativity), and some practices overturned (e.g., unexpected ways of handling plagiarism). 

The Upcoming Academic Year

We look forward to another academic year with the Two-Year LL.M. program! 

We are offering a newly designed course to the Two-Year LL.M. students, Academic Legal English: Special Topics, which engages students in experiential learning to enhance their oral communication skills, grammar skills, and professional language skills. The course topics include:

  • Reflecting on Legal English Skills
  • Listening to a Law School Lecture
  • Optimizing Study Strategies for Law School
  • Using (& Not Using) Generative AI in Law School
  • Participating in and Facilitating Law School Discussions
  • Using Grammar in Legal Contexts: Conditionals
  • Writing Academic and Professional Emails
  • Exploring the Scholarly Writing Genre

We also look forward to some exciting upcoming projects with our legal English colleagues at several Ukrainian law schools.

  • We will continue to participate in the monthly working group with Ukrainian linguists teaching in the law context.
  • We are working on designing and delivering a writing retreat for colleagues at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in December 2024.

As we reflect on its evolution over since 2008, we are proud of the quality legal English curriculum that the team has developed. We welcome the new cohort of students and look forward to staying in touch with the students in their second year!

Stephen Horowitz

16th Global Legal Skills Conference (Bari, Italy; June 6-8, 2024)

Had a fantastic and productive experience at the 16th Annual Global Legal Skills Conference in Bari, Italy where I presented on the topic: “Making Legal English Accessible: Ukraine, Afghanistan & the US Bar Exam.”

I was also extremely honored to receive an “Individual Award”Recognition of Achievement in Global Legal Skills Education” award from the Global Legal Skills Institute for “creating collaborative exchanges between US and Ukrainian Legal Educators and for Promoting Legal Skills Education Around the World.”

The other fantastic part was getting to meet so many wonderful members of the Global Legal Skills community in person, including Mark Wojcik, David Austin, Lurene Contento, Chantal Morton, Kim Holst, Artem Shaipov, Louise Kulbicki, Natasha Costello, Claudia Amato, Lindsey Kurtz, Susan Dudley, John Thornton, Shelly Saltzman, Bythia Loudon, Kateřina Chudová, and many others. And particularly special was getting to finally meet in person Ukrainian law professors Oksana Kiriiak (Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University) and Nadiia Maksimentseva (Oles Gonchar Dnipro National University), who had both been active participants in all of the legal English trainings over the past year.

Prof. Oksana Kiriiak (left), Prof. Nadiia Maksimentseva (middle), & Prof. Horowitz (right)

Fact of the day: The bones of St. Nicholas (aka Santa Clause) are buried in the Basilica of Saint Nicholas in Bari. And thanks to a recommendation from a friend, I just started reading an amazing novel of historical fiction titled Nicked by M.T. Anderson which is set in Bari which tells the somewhat fictionalized story of how Santa’s bones ended up there.

Sri Lanka

Flew to Sri Lanka to lead workshops on legal English curriculum development for the University of Colombo and University of Jaffna in connection with USAID’s Efficient and Effective Justice (EEJ) Program in Sri Lanka. Also met with faculty from the Open University of Sri Lanka and University of Peradeniya to lay the groundwork for legal English curriculum support. Similar to the situation in Ukraine, law schools in Sri Lanka are in the process of moving to English-only curriculum.

Ukraine

  • Initiated conversations with Georgetown Law faculty to establish a sort of umbrella “Ukraine legal support” group within the Georgetown Law community in order to identify and connect the various people and entities within the law school that have been involved with providing law-related support to Ukraine. The goal is to be able to increase opportunities for collaboration and info sharing and also establish a central point of contact for inquiries, events, getting involved, etc.
  • Looking forward to re-starting the weekly Legal English Conversation sessions for Ukrainian law and legal English faculty that I’ve run for the past year. In each session, some subset of the 30+ Ukrainian faculty members and 30+ US/EU faculty members join and are paired off in breakout rooms for legal English conversation. (If interested in being added to the list of volunteers, please feel free to email me at stephen.horowitz@georgetown.edu.)
  • Looking forward to continuing to support the organization of Legal English trainings for Ukrainian law and legal English faculty.
  • Looking forward to continuing to support the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Peer-to-Peer Writing Project, which matches KMA students with American law students, including several from Georgetown Law for all three semesters the program has run so far.

ABA Afghan Legal Professionals Scholarship & Mentoring Pilot Program

Continued providing the online self-guided pre-LLM legal English program for fellows in the ABA Afghan Legal Professionals Scholarship & Mentoring Pilot Program. The course, which I co-created, is hosted on the USLawEssentials learning management system. The course is made available for free to all fellows in the program who have completed the legal English assessment designed by Prof. Lindsey Kurtz (Penn State Law), Prof. Dan Edelson (Seton Hall Law), and me last year to support the ABA Pilot Program.

The International Jurist

Was quoted in the article “Legal English Bridges law and language for foreign-educated LLM students,” written by Joshua Alter (Associate Dean of International Programs at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law) which appeared in The International Jurist June 21, 2024.

Bar Exam Support for LLM Students

*Once again co-taught with Prof. Daniel Edelson (Seton Hall Law) a 4-week bar essay skills course (for MEE and MPT) this summer through USLawEssentials using a “pay what you can” model to make legal English bar support accessible to all LLM students who need it.

Online Legal English

Continued my annual tradition of teaching part of the summer pre-LLM English for American Law School course for incoming LLM students at St. John’s Law School. After leaving St. John’s in 2020, I collaborated with Daniel Edelson to create an online version of the summer legal English program in St. John’s Canvas system. The course content, which we designed to be used as both a synchronous or self-guided course, helps students learn the basics of the US legal system, US law school culture, legal writing, and case reading and analysis.

Fall 2024 Semester

Excited to be teaching sections of both Legal English and US Legal Research & Writing this semester to the Two-Year LLM students this fall semester!

Annual Newsletter from the Georgetown University Department of Linguistics

Thanks to my Legal English colleague Prof. John Dundon (who is also in the middle of completing his PhD in linguistics at Georgetown) for putting the Georgetown University Department of Linguistics Annual Newsletter on my radar. One of the unique benefits of being part of the Legal English faculty at Georgetown Law is getting to exist and work in the same university as one of the top linguistics programs in the U.S.

The Newsletter highlights an amazing range of talented folks and fascinating accomplishments. It also provides a great overview of what “linguistics” covers in the current era. Below is a small sampling of items from the newsletter.

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Georgetown 2-Year LLM grad helps repatriate artifacts to Cambodia

Post by Sokunthyda Long, a Fulbright recipient who graduated from Georgetown Law’s Two-Year LLM Program in 2023, passed the New York bar, and is part of the restitution team in repatriating artifacts back to Cambodia.

From interviewing former looters at remote cultural sites to being featured on a 60 Minutes segment by Anderson Cooper on the repatriation of Cambodian artifacts, my team at Edenbridge and Brad Gordon, along with the support and partnership with the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, Homeland Security Investigations, and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and other important liaisons, have been successful in returning hundreds of artifacts back to Cambodia.”

I started out as a legal intern at Edenbridge Asia in 2020 where I was involved in the repatriations of looted Cambodian artifacts. The team and I, along with other relevant stakeholders, are currently working to set up the Cambodian Treasures Foundation to focus on repatriation of statues and preservation of cultural heritage. My work consists of interviewing former looters, documenting evidence, and negotiating with museums, private collectors, and other dealers to return looted artifacts. These investigations have resulted in various significant returns, including the recent return of 14 artifacts from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in July, 2024. 

While matriculating at Georgetown Law’s Two-Year LL.M. Program with a focus in International Business and Economic Law in 2021, I was taught necessary skills to further my statute repatriation work. The Two-Year LL.M. Program provided me with more time to understand the legal world, especially in international legal diplomacy. I came to understand the significance of soft diplomacy in navigating through the intricacies of politics and economics of international relations. My legal writing and analysis courses have been critical in my understanding of expressing necessary legal arguments to other parties. I am able to draft letters, negotiate, and make requests for provenance research in a more professional manner. The Fundamentals of Legal Writing classes taught me to write with a reader in mind, a skill I developed and have since practiced in my current employment. Further, it is a skill I use in other contexts as well such as conveying my thoughts and rationale to team members, former looters, the media, and other persons in my everyday life.

Applying the knowledge and skills I learned at Georgetown Law to my current work, I am able to communicate with museum directors, cultural experts and other associates in a more confident manner when it comes to consulting and negotiating on returning or loaning the artifacts. It felt incredible to celebrate the returns of the 14 artifacts from the Met, especially the ones I personally researched back in 2020, where I went to the pillaged site and saw the bases and other fragments there. I talked to the former looter to gather more information about it, such as the size of the artifact, the period style, the medium, and any other necessary information that would help make our evidence stronger. It was rewarding to be able to go to the airport and watch the artifacts arrive, proving that the work the team and I did really led to remarkable results.

The repatriation has brought attention and has been picked up by major international media such as various articles written by The New York Times and The Economist, a 60 Minutes episode by Anderson Cooper and a 2 minute podcast by NPR’s All Things Considered.

Despite all of this media coverage, I have to admit that it’s still a bit unbelievable to me that we got the Met to return the artifacts. But I’m extremely proud to have been able to contribute to the effort.

Below are photos provided by Long:

Long at a cultural site back in 2020. “We did some research there and know what was taken out, but haven’t been able to locate those specific items yet, so they’re most likely with private collectors or in a warehouse somewhere.”
Long with one of the repatriated pieces from the Met. “The piece is called Uma or Parvati and she’s from Koh Ker. This is one of the pieces I specifically did research on, and I saw her base/pedestal in Koh Ker in 2020.”
Koh Ker. “I took this photo in March, 2024 right after I came back to Cambodia. I saw the monks and the blue umbrella and just thought that the color contrast was wonderful!”
Angkor Wat. “I took this photo in March, 2024 while conducting a field study on Cambodian cultural heritage with cultural experts, contemporary artists and museum associates.”

Updates from the Georgetown Legal English Faculty (May 2024)

Post by Stephen Horowitz, Legal English Lecturer

Here’s what the Georgetown Legal English faculty have been up to during the course of the spring 2024 semester….

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Craig Hoffman

Prof. Craig Hoffman with Dean William Treanor

We were both extremely proud and at the same time verklempt while attending the retirement ceremony for Prof. Craig Hoffman, one of the original pioneers of legal English, the founder of the Georgetown Two-Year LLM Program, the progenitor of the Legal English faculty, a beloved teacher (or “rock star” as Dean William Treanor put it) to hundreds of Georgetown LLM students, and an inspiration and mentor to so many of us who have been fortunate to have had the privilege of working with him. We will miss him dearly but look forward to building on his legacy and continuing to collaborate with him and seek his insights (whether he wants us to or not. :-))

Prof. Hoffman with members of the Legal English faculty. (From L to R: Heather Weger, John Dundon, Craig Hoffman, Patricia Dutra, Stephen Horowitz and Julie Lake. Not pictured: Michelle Ueland, Benjamin Cheng and Yi Song.)
Prof. Hoffman getting the rock star treatment from some of his students.

Ben Cheng

Prof. Cheng was on leave this semester while he and his wife were blessed with the birth of their second child, Matteo. We and our students all look forward to working with Prof. Cheng again in the fall (and also look forward to Matteo’s first visit to campus!)

The newest member of the Georgetown Legal English Team: Prof. Matteo Cheng!

Heather Weger & Julie Lake

We have had another successful academic year! We would like to use this opportunity to give some “shout outs” (i.e., recognize the colleagues and students who made this year possible) and update you on our work. 

Shout Outs

Most notably, we want to express deep gratitude to Craig Hoffman, whose innovative mind has created a supportive space that recognizes and empowers the voice of Multilingual Lawyers from around the world. Being part of his Legal English vision has enriched our understanding of what student-centered learning means and given us a platform to build meaningful programming. 

To honor his legacy, we warmly congratulate our multilingual students in the Two-Year LLM Program. First, to our graduating cohort! Keep us informed of your ongoing adventures. Second, we recognize the hard work of those who have just completed their first year! It has been an honor to be a part of your journey to practice law in a multilingual world. See you next year. 

Finally, we want to thank our colleagues, past and present, for continuously innovating and pushing the boundaries on legal education practices: Profs. Benjamin Cheng, John Dundon, Stephen Horowitz, Mari Sakai, and Michelle Ueland. 

Our Ongoing Work

Our professional journey during the last several months has had plenty of amazing highs, starting with the lawyer-linguist partnerships and classroom spaces that we shared with the multilingual lawyers in the Two-Year LLM Program. These months have also been filled with milestones to propel us forward: including providing a Legal English curriculum to a brilliant team from the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, forming a working group with Ukrainian linguists teaching in the law context, receiving both the Jim Weaver and ALWD grants that will help us continue to innovate our Legal English pedagogy, and introducing our asset-based Legal English approach at TESOL 2024 International Convention. 

[Editor’s note: See the Georgetown Law Magazine Spring 2024 issue’s cover article “Justice for Ukraine: Georgetown Law Partners with Ukrainian Prosecutors” for more info about the initiative in which Profs. Lake and Weger provided their legal English expertise.]

Prof. Julie Lake (4th from left) and Prof. Heather Weger (2nd from right) led the Georgetown Legal English team that hosted staff from the Office of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General for a five-week intensive language program.

As we turn to summer 2024, we look forward to continuing partnerships with Ukrainian colleagues in our Legal English Pedagogy initiative, upcoming writing partnerships with colleagues at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (KMA), and presenting our asset-based approach to legal writing at the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) Biennial Conference in July 2024. Here’s to a busy summer 2024!

John Dundon

This summer, Professor Dundon is returning to IE Law School in Madrid, Spain, where he will teach a class on contract drafting to students in IE Law’s LL.M. program. He’ll also teach a similar class on the same subject matter this summer in Taipei, Taiwan, with one section taught to law students at National Chengchi University and another taught to practicing lawyers organized through the Taipei Bar Association.

Professor Dundon will present his research at two linguistics conferences, both in the United Kingdom. His first presentation, at the i-Mean 7 Conference on Meaning in Social Interaction in Bristol, UK, will concern the procedural and evidentiary rules in the U.S. legal system that result in interactional asymmetries in trials. His second presentation will be at the 5th European Conference of the International Association for Forensic & Legal Linguistics in Birmingham, UK, and he will summarize his recent research on production format in U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments.

Finally, Professor Dundon will teach U.S. Legal Research, Analysis & Writing during Georgetown Law’s Summer Experience program for newly-matriculated LL.M. students.

Stephen Horowitz

Ukraine

*Organized a second round of Legal English training sessions which included 1) a series of Pronunciation/Speaking Presentations sessions led by Legal English Specialist Linda Pope; 2) a session titled “The Flipped Classroom: A Student-centered Approach for Instruction” led by Prof. Susan Dudley of the University of Richmond Law School; 3) a session titled “Case Analysis & Written and Oral Advocacy” led by Joel B. Kohm, a retired Canadian barrister and solicitor and founder of Kohm Arbitration & Mediation Inc.; and 4) A session titled “Resolving legal disputes without going to trial: ADR, negotiation and mediation” led by Prof. Barrie Roberts, author of The Getting to Yes Guide for ESL Students and Professionals.

*Helped launch a new training focused on the teaching of Legal Research & Writing and recruited a team of US and Canadian legal research and writing experts to participate. (In collaboration with Artem Shaipov of the USAID-funded Justice For All (Ukraine) program.)

*Helped arrange for Prof. Nadiia Maksimentseva, who specializes in constitutional and election law, to give a presentation sponsored by Georgetown Law’s American Constitution Society titled “Derogation of Human Rights and Freedoms During Martial Law in Ukraine.” (Special shout out to my TA Conor Bigley, an ACS officer this past year, for all his help in making this happen.)

*Continued the weekly Legal English Conversation sessions which matched 20+ Ukrainian law and legal English faculty with 20+ US/EU law and legal English faculty. In addition to legal English practice, the weekly Zoom sessions have evolved into a place to share ideas and understanding feel connected as a community. Legal English Conversation for Ukrainian Faculty is taking a break for the summer but will continue in the fall. (If interested in getting involved in any way, feel free to email me at stephen.horowitz@georgetown.edu.)

Refugee Afghanistan Judges

*Continued conducting assessments for refugee Afghan judges and lawyers in connection with the ABA Afghan Legal Professionals Scholarship & Mentoring Pilot Program. The assessment project is in collaboration with Prof. Daniel Edelson (Seton Hall/USLawEssentials.com) and Prof. Lindsey Kurtz (Penn State Law).

*Continued offering a self-guided online pre-LLM legal English program (i.e., Fundamentals of the US Legal System; Reading Cases; Legal Writing; etc.) on the USLawEssentials platform to help prepare Afghan candidates getting ready to start an LLM program at a US law school.

Bar Exam Support for LLM Students

*Will again co-teach a 4-week bar essay skills course (for MEE and MPT) this summer with USLawEssentials using a “pay what you can” model to make legal English support accessible to all LLM students who need it.

Conference Presentations

*(04.26.24) International Education Abroad and Administrators of LLM Programs (ILEAC) Conference:   “Legal English Assessment & Refugee Afghan Judges and Lawyers: A Case Study” on a panel with Dr. Lindsey Kurtz (PhD Applied Linguistics, Director of Legal English Certificate Program and Legal English Specialist at Penn State Law); Prof. Daniel Edelson (Director of Academic Success at Seton Hall Law and Founder of USLawEssentials LLC); and Dana Katz (Vice Chair, Afghan Legal Professionals Resettlement Task Force, American Bar Association (ABA) International Law Section (ILS)).

*(06.06.24) 16th Global Legal Skills Conference in Bari, Italy: “Making Legal English Accessible: Ukraine, Afghanistan & the US Bar Exam”

Miscellaneous

*Attended the ABA International Section Conference in Washington, DC on May 10 to see Dana Katz, Daniel Edelson and others on a panel presentation titled “Lean on Me: Guiding Legal educational and Career Pathways for Afghan Lawyers and Judges Starting Over in the United States.” After the presentation, I was honored to get to meet in person several of the Afghan judges whom I’d met via Zoom to conduct legal English assessments with and also several of the U.S. legal professionals who have been serving as mentors to the Afghan judges and lawyers.

*Completed three legal English text book reviews for academic publishers and also wrote a blurb for the back cover of The Getting to Yes Guide for ESL Students and Professionals: Principled Negotiation for Non-Native Speakers of English by Barrie J. Roberts.

*For a third year in a row hosted the Two-Year LLM students (along with Legal English faculty and members of the Office of Graduate and International Programs) for an end-of-semester, good ol’ American-style cookout + potluck that included cornhole, soccer, and s’mores! Looking forward to continuing this fun and wonderful tradition for many years to come.

Prof. Dundon’s publications on display at Georgetown Law Faculty Scholarship & Teaching Luncheon

Post by Prof. Stephen Horowitz, Legal English Lecturer.

We were excited to see Prof. John Dundon, who teaches in Georgetown Law’s Two-Year LLM Program, representing Georgetown Legal English at the recent Georgetown Law Faculty Scholarship & Teaching Luncheon. The scholarship display included two recent publications (see below) by Prof. Dundon, who has a J.D., M.A. in Applied Linguistics and is in the process of obtaining his PhD in Sociolinguistics.

  • Dundon, J.T. (2024). Language ideologies and speaker categorization: A case study from the U.S. legal system. International Journal of Legal Discourse, 9(1), 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijld-2024-2007  
  • Dundon, J.T. (2023). ‘A shifting precipice of unsettled law’? A survey of how U.S. courts treat expert testimony using forensic stylistics. The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 30(1), 119-137. https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.23788

ILEA/LL.M. Conference: Afghan Legal Professionals & Legal English Assessment + Support

Post by Prof. Stephen Horowitz, Legal English Lecturer.

I was honored to have the opportunity to present last week on a panel titled “Legal English Assessment & Refugee Afghan Judges and Lawyers: A Case Study“ as part of the 2024 ILEA/LL.M. Online Conference (ILEA/LL.M. = International Education Abroad and Administrators of LLM Programs) hosted by American University Washington College of Law and put on by the organizing committee of Melanija Radnovic (American University Washington College of Law), Diane Edelman (Brooklyn Law School), Jenny Hutcherson (Cornell Law School), Karen McMichael (Temple University Beasley School of Law), and Joshua Alter (Northwestern Pritzker School of Law).

[Link to presentation slides] [Link to video recording] [Link to audio transcript]

In addition to me, the panel included:

The presentation described efforts by Prof. Edelson, Dr. Kurtz, and me to develop a better approach to legal English assessment for law school purposes, and the intersection with the ABA Afghan Legal Professionals Scholarship & Mentoring Pilot Program (the “Pilot Program”), led by Michael Byowitz and Dana Katz, the Chair/Founder and the Vice-Chair respectively of the ABA Afghan Legal Professionals Resettlement Task Force, which administers the Pilot Program. The program was in need of language assessment support to help it guide former Afghan judges and lawyers in re-establishing their careers in the United States, a common path being matriculation in a one-year LL.M. program at a US law school followed by the taking of a bar exam.

Between August 2023 and April 2024 we conducted over 20 legal English assessments using an approach designed with the help of Dr. Kurtz’s expertise based on a variety of underlying principles and best practices which Kurtz detailed in the presentation.

About halfway through the assessment process, the Pilot Program also communicated a need for pre-LL.M. Legal English support to help the Afghan legal professionals improve their language and knowledge in connection with the US legal education system. This led to the creation of a self-guided online Legal English program comprised of six modules on Edelson’s USLawEssentials learning management platform, which has proved to be a hit with the Afghan legal professionals.

The takeaways from the presentation were that the collaboration has been extremely effective in better supporting the Afghan legal professionals, and all of us involved have greatly appreciated the opportunity to learn from each other and contribute to an innovative solution to a challenging bigger picture problem. It has also been a unique honor and pleasure to have the opportunity to interact with some of the top legal minds from Afghanistan.

We are very grateful to Prof. Radnovic and the ILEA/LL.M. Conference organizers for giving us the chance to share this experience.

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More information here about the ABA Afghan Legal Professionals Scholarship & Mentoring Pilot Program

If you would like to make a donation to the program, you can use the link or QR code below.

ALWD Teaching Grant awarded to Georgetown Legal English Faculty for second year in a row

Post by Prof. Stephen Horowitz, Legal English Lecturer.

Congratulations to Georgetown Legal English faculty members Profs. Julie Lake and Heather Weger, who both teach in Georgetown’s unique Two-Year LLM program, for being awarded a Teaching Grant by the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) for their grant proposal titled, “An Innovative Approach to Strengthen Multilingual Student Voices and Autonomy in Legal Writing Classes”!

Prof. Heather Weger
Prof. Julie Lake

Georgetown Legal English faculty member Prof. Stephen Horowitz (who also teaches in the Two-Year LLM Program) previously received an ALWD Teaching Grant in 2023 for his proposal (with Prof. Daniel Edelson of Seton Hall Law) to create a self-guided online legal writing course that would make legal writing instruction easily available to students in anywhere in the world at no cost and on their own schedule. (The course–Essential US Legal Writing for International Law Students & Attorneys–has since been made available to Ukrainian law schools and to Afghan judges and lawyers connected with the ABA Afghan Legal Professionals Scholarship & Mentoring Pilot Program.)

Below is Lake and Weger’s innovative proposal:

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“An Innovative Approach to Strengthen Multilingual Student Voices and Autonomy in Legal Writing Classes”

Summary: For our teaching idea, we will develop a pedagogical sequence (with tasks and materials) that empower multilingual students, arguably a marginalized sector of law school, to assess and revise their writing using an asset-based lens. 

Rationale: Over the past 10 years, as we have taught legal writing to multilingual students in law school, we have seen how these writers are decentered as they navigate their educational experience. This led us to reflect on our teaching practices in our legal writing courses, resulting in several pedagogical shifts aligned with asset-based principles (MacSwan, 2020) that foster a sense of belonging and inclusivity for multilingual (and monolingual) students. The next step is to create a pedagogical process that empowers students to take charge of their legal writing experience and develop their legal writing voice. 

Becoming an autonomous writer with a clearly defined individual “voice” (Lancaster, 2019; Matsuda & Tardy, 2007) can be challenging for any novice legal writer and doubly-challenging for multilingual writers. The first step toward developing one’s voice is for emerging writers to develop the ability to analyze their own written texts (Teng, 2020).

Yet, in our legal writing courses, we have noticed that multilingual students often struggle to critically engage with writing in their non-dominant language; instead, they look to teachers to “correct” their written texts.

To help learners overcome this dependency and develop their legal writing voice, we want to transform traditional standard-based pedagogy (Cox, Malone, & Winke, 2018) into asset-based pedagogy (Lubbe & Eloff, 2004) as we design a pedagogical sequence that encourages learners to take charge of their legal writing process.

Teaching idea: We will develop a pedagogical sequence with tasks and materials that relies on an asset-based pedagogy (e.g., MacSwan, 2020) for teaching writing to multilingual law students (our population.)

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And here is the official email announcement from ALWD:

Congratulations to ALWD Teaching Grants Recipients

Dear Colleagues:

The ALWD Board and Teaching Grants Committee congratulate the recipients of our 2024 grants! Thank you to all who submitted proposals, and we look forward to the results of the grants, as summarized below.

Aysha Ames (Fordham University School of Law) proposed “Counter Story: Using `Outsider’ Narratives to Tell Complete Stories.” Aysha will “create a two-credit upper-level legal writing course on counter storytelling with the goal of centering non-dominant narratives in the law. Counter storytelling creates space for untold narratives and truths from ‘outsiders.'”

Stephanie Der (LMU Loyola Law School-Los Angeles) proposed “Rethinking the Legal Research Process in Light of Generative AI.” Stephanie will “draft proposed guidelines on how to shift the way we teach the legal research process to optimize the benefits of AI while alerting students to its limitations” and “support these guidelines with research exercises aimed at helping students to understand when and how to use Lexis AI and Westlaw AI.”

Julie Lake (Georgetown University Law Center) and Heather Weger (Georgetown University Law Center) proposed “An Innovative Approach to Strengthen Multilingual Student Voices and Autonomy in Legal Writing Classes.” They will develop teaching materials that “empower multilingual students, arguably a marginalized sector of law school, to assess and revise their writing using an asset-based lens.”

Bryan Schwartz (University of Arizona Rogers College of Law) proposed “Advanced Lawyering Skills for the NextGen Bar & Future Criminal Practitioner” and will develop “writing projects and simulation exercises aimed at testing and reinforcing the first-year legal writing concepts as well as the foundational lawyering skills likely to be tested by the NextGen Bar Performance Tasks.”

Carolyn Williams (University of North Dakota School of Law) proposed “Team-Based Learning Study Guides and Readiness Assessment Quizzes.” Carolyn will rewrite Study Guides and Readiness Assessment Quizzes for updated material for team-based learning.

Also, the ALWD website has material from recently completed grants. ReviewVeronica Finkelstein‘s (Wilmington University School of Law) case file for an employment discrimination claim stemming from a legal associate’s encounter with bias. Or view screenshots from Stephen Horowitz (Georgetown University Law Center) and Daniel Edelson‘s (Seton Hall University School of Law) free online course for teaching legal English to non-native speakers.

Thank you,

The 2024 ALWD Teaching Grants Committee

Aliza Milner (Syracuse University College of Law) & Emily Zimmerman (Drexel University Kline School of Law), co-chairs; Rachel Goldberg (Cornell Law School); Ann Killenbeck (University of Arkansas School of Law); Megan McAlpin (University of Oregon School of Law); Jonathan Moore (University of Akron School of Law); Sarah Ricks (Rutgers Law School-Camden); Catherine Wasson (Elon University School of Law)

“Approaching Legal English Through Transactional Law” – Prof. Dundon presents at Language & Law Conference in Poland

Post by Stephen Horowitz, Professor of Legal English

Prof. John Terry Dundon, a member of Georgetown Law’s Legal English Faculty who teaches in the Georgetown Two-Year LLM Program, recently attended the Sixth Biennial Language and Law Conference at the University of Bialystok, Faculty of Law in Bialystok, Poland.  It was his second time at the conference (he last attended in 2019), and he had a great time reconnecting with legal English professionals from all over Europe. 

Prof. Dundon presenting at University of Bialystok

Prof. Dundon gave a presentation titled Approaching Legal English through Transactional Law, which summarized the way that his current class on Contract Drafting at Georgetown Law combines substantive instruction about contract drafting with practice in a number of legal English skills (e.g., adapting language from precedent contracts, explaining contractual changes in ordinary English, and writing professional emails). He walked the audience through his syllabus, course materials, and one of the units from the course.

Questions afterwards related to ways that the course could be adapted to classes in programs that are not overtly US-law focused, as well as different ways to combine expertise from both lawyers and linguists in a single classroom.

Prof. Dundon in Warsaw

Other presentations at the conference related to legal English instruction in a variety of educational and institutional contexts, legal translation, the Plain English movement, and the work of multilingual lawyers in Europe.

Overall it was a fascinating conference, and Prof. Dundon felt very lucky to attend.

Updates from the Georgetown Legal English Faculty (June 2023)

Post by Stephen Horowitz, Professor of Legal English

Julie Lake 

  • Professor Lake will spend the summer working with Professor Heather Weger to revise the language-focused curriculum for Fundamentals of Legal Writing for the 2023-2024 academic year. In Fall 2023, incoming Two-Year students will learn how to use language-based strategies to craft a high-quality memo (i.e., a lawyer-to-lawyer document). In Spring 2024,incoming Two-Year students will learn about the scholarly writing genre and how to write a high-quality mini-scholarly legal research paper. She will also research productive ways to use ChatGPT as a learning tool for law and linguistic students.
  • When she is not working, she will be traveling, hiking, and camping with her family. Her personal “language-based” summer project is to begin learning how to speak Spanish in preparation for her daughter’s new two-way Spanish-English immersion school.

John Dundon

  • Presented at the Sixth International Language & Law Conference at the University of Bialystok Faculty of Law in Bialystok, Poland in June. Title: “Approaching Legal English through Transactional Law.”
  • Will be teaching “Introduction to U.S. Contract Drafting and Interpretation” at IE University Law School in Madrid, Spain in June and July.
  • Presenting at the Twelfth Bonn Applied Linguistics Conference in Bonn, Germany in July. Title: “When multilingual litigants encounter monolingual ideologies in U.S. judicial opinions.”
  • Teaching “U.S. Legal Research, Analysis & Writing” for Georgetown Law’s Summer Experience program in August.
  • Traveling in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan with my family.

Heather Weger

  • Professor Weger is excited to be traveling to South Korea this summer! On July 5, she will speak at an alumni event generously hosted by Mr. Seung-Hoon Lee, Chairman of Lee International IP & Law Group, Board Member of ALAAB, and alumnus of Georgetown Law Center and Seoul National University.
  • Prof. Weger is looking forward to making connections with the international community that Georgetown embraces and providing updates on the Law Center, including a focus on the innovative and impactful Two-Year LL.M. Program.

Paula Klammer

  • Continuing to work on her dissertation titled “The Semantic Rabbit Hole”
  • Preparing to teach “Advanced Scholarly Writing and Oral Communication in the Law” in the fall together with Profs. Julie Lake and Heather Weger.
  • Studying German at the Goethe Institut this summer (and loving it!).
  • Hosting Argentinian Legal Spanish expert Hairenik Aramayo for her US visit in July.
  • And she and her husband Pablo went to the Capital Wheel at National Harbor for Pablo’s birthday, and they received a photo!  

Stephen Horowitz

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