Legal English for LLM Students

描述

750 key terms and phrases plus legal skills development

This course is designed with the specific needs of LLM students in mind. It teaches over 750 terms essential for successful postgraduate legal studies in English, and also includes invaluable study tips, exercises designed to train your academic legal skills development and reading, writing, listening and speaking practice. The texts are all taken from common law legal systems and provide an indispensable introduction to common law legal systems.

• interactive reading exercises
• interactive listening exercises
• writing exercises (professional version)
• speaking exercises (professional version)
• vocabulary quizzes
• language of common law legal systems
• language of key areas of law
• essential academic legal skills
• study tips
• recordings of lectures, seminars and discussion groups
• advice on answering problem questions
• course certificate upon completion

Course description

English for LLM students presents key academic Legal English terminology in short online reading and listening passages. The course materials are based on the kinds of texts with which LLM students must be familiar. These text types include: judgments, case notes, legal opinions, introductions to key areas of law and legal study, academic texts, legislation, recordings of lectures, seminars and student discussions. The exercises that follow each reading or listening passage include multiple choice, fill-in-the-blanks, true-false and matching exercises that are designed to help you learn the vocabulary and academic legal skills through context, testing and reinforcement. All of your results are stored in a database which you can access at any time to monitor your progress.

Course duration

The basic version of the course provides 15-20 hours of online self-study. Professional membership includes a further 2 hours of private instruction each month by a TransLegal lawyer-linguist instructor who is assigned as your personal tutor.

Course contents

Understanding the law
The sources of law 1: the Constitution and legislation; The sources of law 2: unenacted law; The US court system; The UK court system

Understanding cases
Cases from the US Supreme Court, the UK Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice

Key legal topics 1
Competition law, Intellectual property law, Internet law and common law systems: juries

Law, fact and language
Law and fact, law and language, the judicial construction of cases, rules principles and law

Common law and the doctrine of judicial precedent
Common law legal systems, binding precedent, establishing the principle in a case, judicial precedent in the higher courts

Key legal topics 2
Company law, trust law, contract law, tort law

Understanding statutes
Drafting styles, the rules of interpretation, a case study

Academic legal skills 1: listening skills
A lecture on intellectual property law, a discussion on a recent intellectual property law case, a law students’ discussion group: privacy law, note taking

Academic legal skills 2: writing skills
Constructing a sentence, grammar, spelling and punctuation, paragraphs and presentation, referencing and avoiding plagiarism

Answering problem questions
An example problem question, planning and writing an answer