Course details

Overview ?

Introduction

Good writing skills are a key ingredient in effective organisational communication and personal success. This interactive workshop provides participants with the opportunity to review and develop the skills they need to write effective reports and improve the quality and impact of all their written communications.

The term "legal writing" is generally used to mean all forms of writing written by lawmakers, judges, lawyers and jurists. This includes, but is not limited to, constitutions, laws, regulations, administrative decisions, contracts, instruments and wills, as well as forms of lawsuits, memoranda and judicial submissions to courts and others. All forms of legal writing can be reverted to two main types: legal analysis and legal drafting. This program deals with the both aspects to cover the formulation of administrative decisions as well as memoranda. The jurist must have some general characteristics when he begins to write legal memoranda, in order to be meaningful. Otherwise, the legal memorandum can be fraught with weakness and gaps that can lead to unsatisfactory results. He must have a sense of law, means his ability to conclude many of the points and that through the study of the merits and facts of the subject in consideration and neutrality. The legal sense also depends on the extent of the full background of the writer of the memorandum through the laws and regulations in the field of residence issued by the specialized authorities. The writer must have the ability to summarize the results concluded and organized according to the sequence of events or proceedings and thus allows the judge to consider the subject and view the memorandum in easy and simple way, the skills of writing legal memoranda and correspondences are numerous and of great importance in the field of law.

Target

Provide participants with the necessary skills for excellent legal writing, and provide them with the necessary information to clarify the legal and provide a theoretical and practical briefing on the assets of the preparation of memoranda and reports and the preparation controls to achieve the goal in each of the following fields:

Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of reports, letters, memos, e-mails, minutes, instructions, briefing notes and other forms of written communication
The field of litigation and civil and commercial litigation before different courts.
The field of defense in criminal, administrative, disciplinary and other cases.
The field of defense before the boards of inquiry and discipline and organizations with jurisdiction and so on.
The field of daily performance in the legal and judicial field in general.
The field of daily performance of administrative and security work in the governmental, public, oil and private sectors.
For full knowledge of all sections of the law.
Participants acquire sufficient skills in the field of legal writing.
Provide participants with the necessary information for legal clarification.
The ability to practice the procedures for legal disputes.
Full knowledge of contract drafting and documentation in an integrated legal form.
Acquiring skills in practical dealing with judicial authorities and knowing their competencies.

Outline

The nature and range of business writing and communication
- Barriers and pitfalls in business communication
- Differences between written and oral communication
- Differences between types of business writing
- ‘Effective’ writing verses ‘efficient’ writing
- Identifying your own strengths and weaknesses
Characteristics of effective reports
- Putting the reader first
- The role of introductions and conclusions
- Setting and meeting report objectives and terms of reference
- Analysing and understanding the target audience and the readers’ needs
- Drawing clear conclusions and making recommendations
- Length of reports and the use of appendices
The report writing process
- Concept and application of ‘rapid composition’
- Developing ideas and gathering material
- Brain storming and mind-mapping
- Research techniques
Selecting material and structuring reports
- Criteria of relevance - what to leave out and what to put in
- Developing logical sequencing
- Using headings and sub-headings as signposts for the reader
Layout and graphic devices
- Report layout and structure
- Developing and following a ‘house style’ - guidance on how to write reports
- Consistent and correct use of display lists and ‘bullet points’
- Using and presenting tables
- Diagrams, figures and graphs
Editing, proof-reading and computer applications
- Editing
- Getting the best from computer spell- and grammar-checks
- Proof reading
- ‘Track changes’, ‘auto-summarising’, adding foot notes, hyper-linking and other aspects of getting the best from MS Word
Clear communication and improving readability
- Fog factor analysis and readability scores
- Sentence length and paragraph structure
- Dimensions of writing style
- Active vs. passive voice
- Improving language content and style
- Choosing your words
Punctuation and grammar
- The language of grammar (a guide to grammatical terms and functions)
- Commas, full-stops, colons, semi-colons, dashes, brackets etc
- The apostrophe ‘s’
- Hyphenating words
- Consistency in using capital letters for proper nouns
- Relative clauses – ‘which’ or ‘that’
Additional forms of business writing
- Transferring the principles from report writing
- Letters and emails - structure, style and etiquette
- Meeting agendas and minutes
- Writing instructional manuals and procedures
- Job descriptions and person specifications
Supporting reports with presentations
- Relationship between report documentation and oral presentation
- Adapting the content and style
- Choosing the right language - contrast between written and spoken forms
Tutorials and exercises
Participants’ presentations
- Presentation and critique of draft reports
Programme review and action planning
The Concept of Legal Management.
Study of legal sciences.
Drafting skills and use of the legal language.
Legal Drafting basics.
Legal writing and drafting in contemporary systems.
General formal features of the legal document.
Organization of the legal document.
Linking the form of a legal document to its contents.
Factors of ease of understanding, document and ease of use.
The means of ensuring the suitability of the document for its purpose.
Technical drafting of legal rules.
Installation of legal sentence.
Means to improve legal drafting.
Customization.
Use short sentences.
Depreciation.
Parallel, balance and syntactic repetitive words.
Related words.
The objective conditions for writing and drafting legal memoranda.
Formal assets and conditions for writing and drafting legal memoranda.
Principles and rules for the preparation of legal memoranda.
Legislative structure of decisions, regulations and regulations.
Legislative drafting and drafting of memoranda.
Memoranda accompanying administrative investigations.
Legal examination and research memoranda.
Defense memoranda before the court