Due to the prevalence of the English language in international business relations, as well as its role as a legal language worldwide, the international legal community has long felt that traditional English teaching is not sufficient to meet the English language requirements of lawyers. The main reason for this is that such training usually ignores how the use of English can be altered by the particular requirements of legal practice – and by the conventions of legal English as a separate branch of English itself. Today`s Rhaw Bar returns to the rhetorical strategy of defining text as a way to focus the reader`s attention and create meaning. In my article a month ago, I described how using lists in legal writing uses visual rhetoric strategies to stack and charge for important information. In this article, I return to the concept of triggering information, this time through a punctuation mark: the dash. For assistance with any type of document, please contact the lawyers at Virtus Law Firm at 612.888.1000 or send an email info@virtuslaw.com. Our team takes the time to know your specific interests and situation and ensures that the documents we draft are legally up-to-date and meet your end goals. We pay attention to the details that matter. As mentioned earlier, Legal English is very different from Standard English in many ways. The most important of these differences are: n.
the requirement that a person act towards others and the public with the vigilance, attention, prudence and prudence that a reasonable person would use in the circumstances. If a person`s actions do not meet this standard of care, the actions are considered negligent and any resulting damages can be claimed in a negligence lawsuit. In legal pleadings, Anglo-Norman has developed into French law, from which many words of modern legal English originate. This includes property, estates, movable property, leases, executors and tenants. The use of French law during this period had a lasting impact on the general linguistic register of modern legal English. This use also explains some of the complex linguistic structures used in legal writing. In 1362, the Statute of Pleas was published, which stipulated that all legal proceedings must be conducted in English (but Latin). This marked the beginning of formal legal English; French law was used in some forms until the 17th century, although French law was increasingly degenerate.
That is, the frame of the sentence is balanced, all the ideas of the sentence have the same meaning, and the reader is free to decide which parts of the sentence he wants to pay more or less attention to. Thursday`s Rhaw Bar: A Little of All Things Rhetoric and Law – Exploring ideas, theories, strategies, techniques, and criticisms at the intersection of rhetoric and legal communication. A good lawyer will take the time to listen to his client and understand his goals with a contract. Then, they will spend time thinking about how a problem might arise in transactions and designing language to handle each of these situations. For certain types of ongoing contracts, such as the Software Terms of Use, attorneys will periodically review and update the Agreement to reflect changes in the law as well as new issues encountered with changes to the Software and its use. Asking a lawyer to draft your contracts may seem expensive, but it`s much cheaper to get it right at first than it is to bear the cost of litigation and consequences once a problem arises. There are different types (genres) of legal writing: for example, academic legal writing as in legal journals, legal legal writing as in court decisions, or legislative legal drafting as in laws, regulations, contracts and contracts. [8] Another variant is the language used by lawyers to communicate with clients who require a more «user-friendly» written communication style than lawyers. [9] Legal English is traditionally reserved for lawyers in English-speaking countries (including the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya and South Africa) who share common legal traditions. Due to the spread of Legal English as the predominant language of international affairs, as well as its role as a legal language within the European Union, Legal English is now a global phenomenon. It can be unofficially called Lawspeak.
[Citation needed] While the legal language in the Middle Ages combined Latin, French and English to avoid ambiguities. According to Walter Probert, judicial lawyers, who are just beginning in the twentieth century, often manipulate language to make their campaign ideals more compelling. [12] If you think this attention is not important for grammar, especially in business, just ask the maine milk delivery group that, in the absence of an Oxford or serial comma, recently received a decision in their favor and the resulting overtime pay. In a victory that was widely circulated on social media (and was inevitably shared by your friend who teaches English), these milk drivers were able to confirm that the courts pay attention to grammar in contracts to determine the meaning of the document. To quote the Circuit Court judge, «If we want a comma, we have this case.» Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article on attention However, a dash doesn`t just draw attention to the text; The dash also gives the reader an indication of how to make sense of the sentence as a whole. The em-dash is a visually convincing framing device; The dash helps the author choose a dominant meaning for the sentence while distracting the other available meanings. In prehistoric Britain, traditional common law was popularly discussed (see Celtic Law). Legal language and legal tradition changed with waves of conquerors over the following centuries. Roman Britain (after the conquest of 43 AD) followed the Roman legal tradition, and its legal language was Latin. After the Roman withdrawal from Britain around 410 and the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain, the dominant tradition was rather Anglo-Saxon law, which was discussed in the colloquial Germanic language (Old English) and written in Old English since about 600, starting with Æthelberht`s law. After the Norman invasion of England in 1066, Anglo-Norman French became the official language of legal proceedings in England for a period of nearly 300 years until the plea in the English Act of 1362 (and remained little used for another 300 years), while medieval Latin was used for written documents for more than 650 years.