John Dundon

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.

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.

Supporting the Rule of Law in Ukraine: The role of the English-Ukrainian legal dictionary translation project

Posted by Stephen Horowitz, Lecturer of Legal English

I and others on the Georgetown Legal English faculty have been very involved over the past two years in providing Legal English support to Ukrainian law schools in connection with a larger rule-of-law initiative.

What we hadn’t realized until my colleague Prof. John Dundon saw the below post on the Forensic Linguistics listserv is that there’s a fantastic English-Ukrainian legal dictionary translation project that has also been well underway and is also connected to rule of law efforts. We were extremely excited to learn that such a project exists and have already been in touch with the organizers to figure out if there might be any ways to collaborate or provide support.

Below is the text of the original announcement. It’s for an in-person event in the UK. But if you contact the organizer, you can also get access to a Zoom link.

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Supporting the Rule of Law in Ukraine: The role of the English-Ukrainian legal dictionary translation project

Tuesday 15th October, 10:00-14:15 Lloyd Suite, Edgbaston Park Hotel, University of Birmingham, UK

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to invite you to a research event showcasing a UKRI funded English-Ukrainian Legal Dictionary translation project. Legal and linguistic experts from Ukraine’s Constitutional Court, the Department of Constitutional Law at Ivan Franko National University Lviv, and the University of Birmingham Law School, have combined their extensive expertise to develop an ‘English-Ukrainian’ Legal Dictionary.’ Through historical and legal analysis, this first of its kind dictionary will rectify the acute problems that continued application of post-Soviet legal terminology cause for understanding the rule of law in Ukrainian jurisprudence.

By providing correct translations of over 5,000 English-language legal terms, we seek to further embed the rule of law in Ukraine, support Ukraine’s development as a constitutional democracy and advance Euro-Atlantic integration. We invite you to attend this showcase event to meet the lead researchers and practitioners who have developed this unique handbook for scientists, human rights defenders, lawyers, judges, parliamentarians, and everyone who deals with international legal documents. Join us and lend your support to this interinstitutional initiative to help establish the rule of law in Ukraine and enshrine Ukrainian independence from Russian-dominated legal interpretation.

Full event schedule below.

Kind regards

Hannah Lowe

Global Partnerships Manager (Europe)

University of Birmingham

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Event Schedule

10:00-10:30

Coffee and registrations

10:30-10:40

Welcome

Professor Robin Mason, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International), University of Birmingham

10.40-11.05

The Case for an English-Ukrainian Legal Dictionary

Mr Serhiy Holovaty, Chairman of the Standing Committee on Legal Terminology of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. Head of the Ukrainian Academy of Legal Sciences. (Former Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine)

11.05-11.30

The Dictionary’s impact and real-world application in the Ukrainian legal context

Professor Serhii Riznyk, Justice, Constitutional Court of Ukraine

Professor Olena Boryslavska, Head of the Department of Constitutional Law, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv

11.30 -11.50

Coffee break

11.50-12.15

Compiling the Dictionary’s 5000 terms and translations: linguistic, legal and phonological principles Associate

Professor Nataliia Hrynia, Department of Foreign Languages for the Humanities, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv

Professor Bohdan Azhnyuk, Director of the O. O. Potebnia Institute of Linguistics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv

12:15-12:40

Validating terms, translations and English Case Law examples: the British-Ukrainian collaborative process

Professor Lisa Webley, Head of the Centre for Research in Professional and Legal Education, Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham

Student researchers, Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham

12.40-13.15

Q&A/Panel discussion

13:15-14:15

Lunch and networking

2-Year LLM Summer Internship: Eduany Pedro

Post by Stephen Horowitz, Lecturer of Legal English

Eduany Pedro hails from Palanca, a modest neighborhood in Luanda, the capital of Angola. He is a candidate in the Environmental and Energy Law LLM program at Georgetown where is currently completing the second year of Georgetown Law’s unique Two-Year LLM Program. Eduany has a law degree from Catholic University of Angola and a postgraduate diploma in Law and Oil and Gas Business Management from Agostinho Neto University. You can learn more about him from his LinkedIn profile.

My summer internship at Tauil & Chequer Advogados in association with Mayer Brown (TCMB) in Rio de Janeiro exceeded all my expectations, becoming one of the most enriching experiences of my life. The idea of pursuing an international internship first took root two years ago, during my time in Austin, Texas.

In 2022, after arriving in the U.S., I enrolled in the Academic English Program at the University of Texas at Austin (UT). After a year of intensive language study, I realized that pursuing a Two-Year LL.M. would be the ideal next step for two main reasons: (i) It would provide a comprehensive understanding of the American legal system, which is essential for my career, and (ii) it would offer the opportunity for an international summer internship, enhancing my global legal exposure. I vividly remember the moment I received the email from Georgetown inviting me to join the program—I was attending the International Energy Conference in Miami, organized by the Association of International Energy Negotiators (AIEN), and I couldn’t stop smiling. It was the perfect convergence of events, reinforcing that I was on the right path.

The journey to secure the internship was a focused effort. From the outset of the LL.M. program, I set a clear goal to gain practical experience in the energy sector. I was diligent in attending energy conferences and networking with professionals, ensuring the right people knew my aspirations. Through these efforts and consistent conversations, my former professor Norman Nadorff and my friend Leandro Duarte advised me to apply for a specific internship opportunity. I followed their advice, applied, and was thrilled to receive the positive news.

I joined the Oil & Gas Practice Team at TCMB in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Working alongside many professionals I had already connected with through international conferences and professional platforms like LinkedIn. My responsibilities included conducting legal research, drafting energy contracts, assisting in creating business plans for clients interested in investing globally, and preparing legal reports and memos. My previous legal experience, combined with my first academic year at Georgetown, proved invaluable. For example, the Contract Drafting course with Professor Dundon directly aligned with my first assignment at the firm. I was tasked with reviewing an oil and gas contract, and the project was almost identical to my final exam in Professor Dundon’s class. Although I was initially nervous because a partner personally assigned me the task, I recalled that I had earned an ‘A’ in the course and used the same approach, adapting the content to the specific legal regime involved.

Additionally, skills from my U.S. Legal Research, Analysis, and Writing course with Professor Hoffman and Legal Writing with Professor Lake were more beneficial than I had anticipated, allowing me to contribute effectively and meet tight deadlines.

My experience at the law firm exceeded my expectations in several ways:

As a native Portuguese speaker, I naturally expected that most of my work in Brazil would be conducted in Portuguese. However, to my surprise, nearly all of my assignments were in English. This unexpected shift not only challenged me but also provided a great opportunity to refine my professional English skills, which made the experience even more rewarding.
I expected the firm, given its size and reputation, to have a highly pressured, perhaps even distant, working environment. Instead, I found the atmosphere to be friendly, collaborative, and supportive. The partners, contrary to the stereotype of “Big Law,” were approachable and down-to-earth.
The workload was intense, but the dedication and enthusiasm of my colleagues were inspiring. I often found myself working late into the night alongside peers, and no one ever complained. The shared sense of purpose and drive to excel, especially among those younger than me, was both fascinating and motivating.

In conclusion, my internship at TCMB not only solidified my professional skills but also reshaped my perceptions of the legal industry. The unexpected challenges, such as working extensively in English and the fast-paced environment, pushed me to grow in ways I hadn’t anticipated. The collaborative culture and the dedication of my colleagues made the experience truly fulfilling. This journey reaffirmed my passion for international energy law and demonstrated the value of seizing opportunities, building meaningful connections, and continuously pushing my own boundaries. I feel more confident and prepared for the next phase of my career, with a clearer vision of the impact I want to make in the global legal landscape.

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.

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!

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

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

Updates from the Georgetown Legal English Faculty (December 2023)

Post by Stephen Horowitz, Professor of Legal English

Here’s what the Georgetown Legal English faculty have been up to over the fall 2023 semester….

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Heather Weger & Julie Lake & Michelle Ueland

Legal English team members Professors Julie Lake, Heather Weger, and Michelle Ueland designed and delivered an intensive 5-week Legal English program for the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine from November 13-December 15, 2023. They collaborated with Georgetown Law’s Center on National Security (with Professor Mitt Regan and Anna Cave) and the Atrocity Crime Advisory Group (ACA).

It was an honor to work with such dedicated colleagues and students. We look forward to future collaborations of this kind. Stay tuned for a more detailed blog post in January!

John Dundon

This September, Professor Dundon was invited to participate as a panel discussant at a linguistics conference at the University of Bonn, Germany. The title of the conference was “Language as a Social Practice: Constructing (a)symmetries in legal discourse,” and Professor Dundon spoke on a panel (together with professors from Germany and Finland) about how asymmetries in legal discourse can lead to societal injustice.

He thoroughly enjoyed attending the conference and considers himself very fortunate to have been invited to meet with so many leaders in the field of language and law. The conference proceedings will be published (together with a contribution from Professor Dundon) in an upcoming volume with Cambridge University Press.

In other news, Professor Dundon is finishing up his final year of coursework towards his doctorate in sociolinguistics. This semester, he is researching interactional features of Supreme Court oral arguments, and specifically the “production format” of utterances made by attorneys as they negotiate having to speak on behalf of themselves, their client, and their legal team. Professor Dundon is also conducting a survey of ideologies about language use and language learning on the public-facing websites of local bilingual schools in the District of Columbia.

Stephen Horowitz

Ukraine

*Collaborated with Artem Shaipov of USAID’s Justice For All program and several other legal English professors (Alissa Hartig, Susan Dudley, Catherine Beck, Oksana Kiriiak, and Linda Pope) to provide multiple legal English trainings for Ukrainian law faculty and legal English faculty over the course of the Fall 2023 semester.

*Led one of the trainings–9 sessions of Legal English Conversation–and recruited a cohort of 15 additional law/legal English volunteers (including colleague John Dundon) to engage with Ukrainian faculty in each Legal English Conversation session.

*Currently in the process of setting up additional trainings during Spring 2024. And planning a new round of matching Ukrainian law schools with any international law school/legal English faculty interested in teaching a course, guest lecturing, providing support for academic publishing, or helping in other ways. (Email Stephen.Horowitz@georgetown.edu if interested in volunteering in some capacity.)

*Recruited Georgetown Law JD students to participate in a six-week peer-to-peer legal writing project with students from Kyiv Molhya Academy University during the fall semester that involved JD students from several other US law schools as well. Currently recruiting more Georgetown Law students for the next session to start late January.

*In collaboration with law professor Alan Blakely, helped set up the Ukraine-related Resources Page.

*Reached a 500-day Duolingo streak for Ukrainian language study!

Afghanistan

*Continued conducting assessments for 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).

*Created, with Daniel Edelson, a self-guided online pre-LLM legal English program (i.e., Fundamentals of the US Legal System; Reading Cases; Legal Writing) to help prepare Afghan candidates getting ready to start an LLM program at a US law school.

*Currently working with ABA program leaders to recruit additional mentors–both law faculty and law students–to provide legal English and other support for the candidates. (Email Stephen.Horowitz@georgetown.edu if interested in volunteering.)

Japan

*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.

USA

*Teaching a December/January “Bar Essay Writing Skills for LLM Students” online course for USLawEssentials together with Prof. Daniel Edelson. The course is designed to be accessible to all students who need it regardless of finances, and provides specialized bar essay writing support geared to non-native English speakers.

*Was the subject of interviews by Wordrake (on Legal English and Plain English) and Amicus Partners (on my career path to becoming a legal English professor.)

*Provided a book cover blurb for The “Getting to Yes” Guide for ESL Students and Professionals: Principled Negotiation for Non-Native Speakers of English by Barrie J. Roberts at the request of University of Michigan Press.

*Received a wonderful email from a former student, reprinted with her permission:

“I found out I passed the New York bar yesterday! I wanted to thank you specifically because both torts and criminal law came up on the exam. The torts essay was asking for all elements of negligence so that was our entire final exam for Legal English 1. The criminal law essay had 4 sub issues and they were all about Miranda rights, custodial interrogation and whether the defendant waived it knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently. Thank you again for the classes. I remember writing everything I learned from classes instead of from the bar prep materials for those two essays. I’m really grateful for that!” —Sokunthyda Long (Cambodia), graduate of the 2-Year LLM Program at Georgetown Law

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Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and peace-filled holidays and New Year!