Category: Legal English

Reading time: 5 minutes In most professions a not-quite-perfect phrase is a minor blemish. In a contract it is a risk with a price tag. “Shall”, “will” and “may” sit close together in everyday English; in an agreement they are three different worlds. That is why Legal English is not...

How many of us sit behind screens, talking as we write, forgetting that writing is a completely different skill to speaking? Verbal speech allows for pauses and even has vocabulary for it.  Writing though, should be the result of summarised thought put into a clear-cut content driven message, not spoken...

You read all documentation in English, wrote the English emails and now suddenly face-to-face, you’re mumbling as words evade you. Racing through short term memory for exact jargon, the Dutch version dominates and you succumb to internal pressure. Unexplainably, your thought screen is now broadcasting even the French or German...

As a Language Partners trainer specialising in legal English, my usual assignments consist of being sent to large city law firms, often to refresh the English of their trainee lawyers and to introduce them to the particular (and sometimes peculiar) vocabulary of the world of law. So imagine my surprise...