Tag: Ukraine support

New: US law student + Ukrainian law student Legal English conversation project

Posted by Stephen Horowitz, Lecturer of Legal English

Very happy to share that I’ve just launched a new initiative to provide Legal English support for over 300 Ukrainian law students. It’s an expansion of the model I’ve been using to host and facilitate Legal English conversation sessions for Ukrainian law and Legal English faculty.

The faculty sessions, which I’ve run for about two years now, involve me hosting a weekly Zoom session and sending a calendar invite to a list of Ukrainian faculty and a list of US/EU faculty who have indicated interest in participating. (I’ve been able to reach and connect with so many Ukrainian faculty members thanks to Artem Shaipov, Legal Advisor and Team Lead for Legal Education Reform for the USAID Justice for All (Ukraine) program.)

Each week I log in to Zoom, and then as faculty members join, I pair them off into breakout rooms for 45 minutes of conversation in English about whatever they want to discuss. Sometimes it’s a 1-to-1 ratio, and sometimes there are 2 or 3 Ukrainian faculty members talking with one US/EU faculty member.

The number of faculty members and faculty volunteers who have signed up to participate is much bigger than the number who actually show up for a given Zoom session. And the numbers seem to work out each time. Faculty members join when they’re able. And if they miss a session, or can only join for one total session during the semester, that’s fine. The model essentially plays the percentages and has worked well 99.9% of the time.

The new initiative, connecting Ukrainian law students and US law students, is the same model, but there will be many more people involved, and many more Zoom sessions happening each week.

So far over 300 Ukrainian law students have signed up, and close to 100 US law students have also signed up. Of the US law students, about half have indicated that they would be willing to be a host for Zoom sessions. And that means there will be up to 50 different student-led Zoom sessions going on each week, each on different days and times. Having this range of options will hopefully help ensure that all of the Ukrainian and US law students can find one time each week to join when they’re able.

This is definitely experimental, so I assume there will be some bumps along the way. But hopefully those bumps will help to identify some protocols and best practices that will make things run more smoothly in the future. (Also, thanks to one of the US law student volunteers, I learned that a similar model is already in use by an organization called Ladies Let’s Talk. Immigrant women in the US are paired with English speakers for the purpose of practicing English conversation.)

And in the bigger picture, as Ukraine’s legal system shifts more towards the West and the EU, and as Ukraine’s law schools begin teaching all of their courses in English, the Ukrainian law students will find themselves better prepared and able to adapt. And also the connections formed now will lead to deeper connections in the future between the legal communities of Ukraine, the US, and other parts of the world.

Get Involved

If you are a US (or English speaking) law student and would like to volunteer, you can sign up just using this Google Form for US/English speaking law students. At some point you will receive calendar invites from the US law students serving as hosts/facilitators.

If you are a Ukrainian law student and would like to participate, you can sign up using this Google Form for Ukrainian law students.

And you can click here for more info and blog posts about the work that I and others in the Legal English/Legal Education field have been doing to support Ukrainian law schools, their faculty, and their students.

Update Oct 19, 2024: Here’s some feedback from some of the Zoom sessions that have already happened:

  • Thank you so much for such opportunity! It was a pleasure to discuss law systems of the US and Ukraine with [NAME1], so I really appreciate it a lot!!
  • I loved meeting all the Ukrainian students and getting to know them!
  • [NAME2] was great at explaining everything, so it was fun to listen to her answers and answer her questions myself)))
  • [NAME3] is such a nice person. It was interesting to talk to him and to get know something new.
  • [NAME4] is awesome!
  • Thank you for great opportunity to talk, get to know each other and develop!)
  • that was a great meeting, I really enjoyed it (especially the part with “only in ohio” lol)
  • I love this lessons
  • Just thank you 🙂

Questions? Feel free to contact me at sh1643@georgetown.edu or via Twitter/X at @gtlegalenglish.

Strengthening Capacity of Ukrainian Law Schools to Teach Legal Research, Analysis, Reasoning, and Writing Skills

Post by Stephen Horowitz, Professor of Legal English

I was very fortunate yesterday to be involved in kicking off a new collaboration among legal research and writing faculty from Ukraine, the U.S., and Canada. Organized by Artem Shaipov of USAID’s Justice For All project in Ukraine, the collaboration is an outgrowth of continued collaboration initiated in 2022 by members of the Global Legal Skills Institute community together with Shaipov and various Ukrainian law faculty members.

(See the ABA International Law News article ““Global Legal English Skills Community Expands Support for Ukrainian Law Schools” for more information about these efforts.)

The goal of the new initiative is to introduce Ukrainian legal research and writing faculty to the various approaches in the US and Canada to teaching legal research, analysis, reasoning and writing skills in order to lay a foundation for future discussion and exploration of ways to support Ukrainian legal writing faculty as Ukraine’s legal education system shifts to a more western-facing focus and continues to build its rule-of-law culture.

Today’s Zoom session, which is the first in a series of five 2-hour sessions, had over 30 participants from across Ukraine and was facilitated with the help of a simultaneous interpreter. It also included five experts on teaching legal skills from the US and Canada who will be participating in this series.

  • Joel B. Kohm, BSc JD, Mediator & Arbitrator, Member of the bars of British Columbia and Ontario (ret.) who presented today on the topic of “Case Analysis and Written & Oral Advocacy.”
  • Katherine Renee Schimkat, Professor of Legal Writing, Co-Director of the Litigation & Dispute Resolution Concentration, University of Miami School of Law, who will be presenting on the topics of “Understanding Case Law” and “Objective Analysis v. Persuasive Advocacy.”
  • Diane Kraft, University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Professor of Practice, Director of Academic Achievement Program, who will be presenting on the topic of “How to Read a Case.”
  • Rachel Wickenheiser, JD, Independent Scholar, Adjunct Faculty at University of Delaware, who will be presenting on the topic of “Legal Writing as a Genre.”
  • Nicole Lefton, Professor of Academic Support and Bar Preparation, Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, who will be presenting on the topic of “Legal Analysis Using IRAC.”

For more information about this initiative, please feel free to contact Stephen Horowitz at stephen.horowitz@georgetown.edu.

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