How To Improve Your Legal English Skills In 10 Weeks

Fact: Legal English skills are important! The legal industry is changing and legal English skills are more in demand than before.

I learned a lot building my business by giving English coaching to top lawyers. English communication skills for lawyers are essential if you want to succeed in the rapidly changing legal market. 

Top lawyers work on their key skills. They constantly improve and upgrade. They recognise the importance of having good legal English skills because they know the legal market is changing & skills for lawyers are changing.

In this blog post we are going to look at 3 reasons why you should improve your legal English skills and then discuss how to improve your legal English skills. If you follow the strategy below you should see progress in 10 weeks.

Build A System To Learn Legal English Skills  

Lawyers who want to improve their legal English skills need to be targeted and systemised in their approach to learning. In this way you don’t waste time learning useless words and phrases. 

To do that you need to understand where, what and how good legal English skills are needed. Let’s take a look and discuss the  3 major benefits to improving your legal English skills.

Good legal English skills help you to communicate clearly this is important. Clear communication means people can be sure of your message. When people are clear about what they have to do things flow smoothly. 

Good Legal English Skills Build Strong Relationships

Top lawyers focus on 3 things:

• Client development. 
• Building strong connections with colleagues.
• Networking

All 3 things require excellent communication skills. Top lawyers work at creating strong relationships. 

To do this they need to know how to speak fluent English without hesitation. This allows them to express opinions clearly on current events. But they also need good legal English skills so that they can communicate clearly with clients, colleagues and the public.

In some firms, partners have regular work meetings with other partners to discuss global current events, how these might impact clients, and major cases that have a negative legal consequence for clients. 

This is a really proactive approach and gives them the opportunity to use their Legal English skills in a safe environment. 

When you have International clients, you need to know about world events. Not just what’s happening in your own country. Even if you don’t have international clients you may have clients who work globally and whose business will be impacted by global events.

When you have good legal English skills, good legal business language and you know how to speak fluent English without hesitation, your clients and colleagues will respect you and listen to you.

Legal English Skills Help You To Promote Yourself

I know you think sales is a dirty word but it isn’t! 

Everyone is selling and persuading! You go to an interview, you are selling yourself by demonstrating how good your legal English is, and showing them you have all the key skills for lawyers. When you advise your client you are selling them your opinion and showing them how you speak fluent English without hesitation. You are demonstrating you know how to win a case in court or out. 

Top lawyers know what language to use and how to use it to sell themselves. They know how to argue like a lawyer who wins cases.

They don’t say, “I’m a top lawyer in a top law firm, we have a great reputation therefore you should work with us because we are the best.” Instead they make an effort to understand the client. They listen actively, find common ground and then sell their skills as a solution to a problem. 

They understand and it shows.

Better Interpersonal skills

Lawyers need good interpersonal skills. To succeed in the global world you need both legal English skills and good interpersonal skills. 

When you have good legal English skills your confidence expands and you need less time to prepare for meetings in English.

This gives you the time to learn how to speak fluent English without hesitation in all situations. Whether you are attending a work meeting or a social event, knowing how to speak fluent English without hesitation will create an excellent impression. 

Creating and using small talk is a skill that can be very effective at helping you turn prospective clients into loyal clients. 

Top lawyers understand that good small talk is not asking lots of meaningless questions or trying to find some common ground. No, they learn how to listen and create authentic small talk by asking the right types of questions. Questions that expand the conversation and put clients at ease. 

This is how they obtain clients and stay at the top. I’m not saying it is easy but it can be learnt. 

English Coaching For Lawyers Who Want To Succeed

How To Improve Your Legal English Skills

Step 1: Develop A Mini Habit

Improving your legal English skills is necessary for any lawyer who wants to have a good reputation in the international field.

It is going to require time and effort. You have to be willing to commit to improving your English and learning the right systems.

The best thing you can do is to develop a habit of learning. 

Create a schedule for learning legal English. Block out a small amount of time every day. 

At first you just want to start creating a learning habit. You need to focus on developing the habit and not learning English.

Start small, block out 5 minutes each day to improve your Legal English skills.

Select material to listen to that is interesting or fun. You need to do this because you learn better when you are happy and engaged.

Step 2: Scale Up

When you have the habit established you can start to add more challenging materials and follow these steps.

• Have patience!: Remember that discovering a language is a progressive process – it does not happen overnight! I know you want to be at the finish line already but you can’t. So take a breath and give yourself time to improve. Like wine you need time to mature!

• Define your learning goals clearly: What do you need to study and why? Get specific on this as it will help to keep you on track and also measure your progress.

• Make studying a routine: Make time to practice daily. It is better to study (or read, or listen to English news, etc) 5 minutes every day than to study for 2 hours once a month. Be persistent and consistent!

• Choose the right materials: You will need reading, grammar, speaking and listening materials. Don’t be afraid of variety. Spice things up a little. Try different materials be adventurous because you are not a boring person!

• Make learning English fascinating: Select materials that relate to things you like. Having an interest in the topic will make improving your English more of a pleasure and less of a pain. In this way you can keep the momentum going.

• DO NOT just focus on grammar! Relate grammar to practical situations. Grammar by itself won’t help you speak more confidently and fluently as a lawyer.  Grammar workouts are terrific, but having your colleague on the other side of the world understand you on a conference call is even better!

• Open your mouth and use your mouth muscles: Practice saying words slowly and carefully, make sure you sound the beginnings and the ends of words. Open your mouth 10 times wider than you normally would and practice reading aloud. It might appear strange, however, it is a really reliable method to improve pronunciation. Workouts like tongue twisters can also help improve your flexibility.

• Utilise the Internet: The Internet is the most amazing, endless English resource that anyone could think of and it is just a click away.

Ok that’s it! There’s no excuse!

You can find 5 minutes a day to learn English. If you need extra assistance, then may be English coaching is right for you. Why not consider working with Caryn.

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