What is legal language and where is it found? What does a forensic linguist do? How can linguistic skills help legal professionals? We are constantly surrounded by legal language, but sometimes it is almost impossible to understand. Providing extracts from real-life legal cases, this highly usable and accessible textbook brims with helpful examples and activities that will help you to navigate this area. Language and Law: * introduces useful linguistic concepts and tools * outlines the methods linguists employ to analyse legal language and language in legal situations * includes topics on such as: written legal language; threats, warnings and speech act theory; courtroom interactions and the work linguists do to help solve crimes; physical and 'spoken' signs; and the creativity of legal language

This book provides a practical handbook for legislation. Written by a team of experts, practitioners and scholars, it invites national institutions to apply its teachings in the context of their own drafting manuals and laws. Analysis focuses on general principles and best practice within the context of the different systems of government in Europe. Questions explored include subsidiarity, legitimacy, efficacy, effectiveness, efficiency, proportionality, monitoring and regulatory impact assessment. Taking a practical approach which starts from evidence-based rationality, it represents essential reading for all practitioners in the field of legislative drafting.

The legal profession is one of honor, respect and dignity-- compensated not only with treasure, pleasure and honor but with the right to right a wrong. In David and Goliath in the Modern Court, author Virgilio J. Santiago provides insight into the Philippine justice system and the role of lawyer to attain truth and dispense justice not only in the Philippines but in all courts of justice, the primordial duty of courts of justice being to attain truth and dispense justice . As Santiago grew up in Manila, he had little ambition. His desires included becoming a driver, marrying his sweetheart, and living a simple life. It took an accident and a possible jail sentence to change his mind. On March 15, 1965, he realized his mother's dream for him to become an attorney. In this memoir, Santiago recalls the highlights of his career and relates details of clients, cases, trials, and verdicts. David and Goliath in the Modern Court narrates Santiago's quest to attain truth and justice, and it describes how courts in the Philippines traversed the labyrinth path of lies, fraud, and schemes to stop evil.

This new edition of Criminal Defence offers a step-by-step guide to practice and procedure in all of the criminal courts. It covers the process in detail, from the role of the defence solicitor, through to shaping a case at the police station, to preparing for trial and finally action after acquittal or conviction and sentence. It also contains specific chapters on youths and clients at a disadvantage. Based on up-to-date case law, it is a best practice guide to being a criminal solicitor and complements the goals of the Law Society's Criminal Law Accreditation Scheme.

As the process of internationalization accelerates, comparative law scholars focus on the adaptation of legal cultures to new realities. It is particularly important to understand (as best we can) the "inner workings" of two groups of lawyers: those in the United States; and those in the major European countries. In which ways do the two groups understand each other, and where do they go their separate ways? And what are the implications for the legal profession and its beneficiaries of their cultural and ideological differences? At a symposium held in Paris, 12 scholars from Europe and the United States met to investigate these issues under two related rubrics: realities and trends on the one hand, and ethics, rules and professional ideologies on the other. The participants have updated their original papers for this publication. In the course of their discussion they reveal which cultural realities persist and are likely to remain, and which trends are broadening the common ground on which lawyers act in both cultures.

Although international arbitration has emerged as a credible means of resolution of transnational disputes involving parties from diverse cultures, the effects of culture on the accuracy, efficiency, fairness, and legitimacy of international arbitration is a surprisingly neglected topic within the existing literature. The Culture of International Arbitration fills that gap by providing an in-depth study of the role of culture in modern day arbitral proceedings. It contains a detailed analysis of how cultural miscommunication affects the accuracy, efficiency, fairness, and legitimacy in both commercial and investment arbitration when the arbitrators and the parties, their counsel and witnesses come from diverse legal traditions and cultures. The book provides a comprehensive definition of culture, and methodically documents and examines the epistemology of determining facts in various legal traditions and how the mixing of traditions influences the outcome. By so doing, the book demonstrates the acute need for increasing cultural diversity among arbitrators and counsel while securing appropriate levels of cultural competence. To provide an accurate picture, Kidane conducted interviews with leading international jurists from diverse legal traditions with first-hand experience of the complicating effects of culture in legal proceedings. Given the insights and information on the rules and expectations of the various legal traditions and their convergence in modern day international arbitration practice, this book challenges assumptions and can offer a unique and useful perspective to all practitioners, academics, policy makers, students of international arbitration.