Introduction to legal language: law as a profession of words
LUG-105 English and Legal Language, Unit I: Introduction to legal language. · LLB · 60 min
What "legal language" means, where it lives (statutes, pleadings, judgments, contracts, correspondence), its scope and the need for it, and why a lawyer's work is nothing but communication. The lecture also covers the levels and kinds of communication and its purposes in the profession, which the papers ask as short notes.
Every paper from 2018-19 to 2025-26 has opened with a question from this lecture: define legal language, state its need, scope and importance, or explain the levels and purpose of communication.
Objectives
- Explain what legal language is and distinguish it from a separate language or a dialect.
- Describe the scope of legal language across legislation, courts, documents and legal education.
- State the need for and the importance of legal language for the legislature, the court, the advocate and the citizen.
- Explain the process, levels, kinds and purposes of communication with examples from legal practice.
- Show, with a sentence from a pleading, why command of language decides advocacy.
Slides
- Law is a profession of words
- What "legal language" means
- The scope of legal language
- Why the law needs a language of its own
- Importance of legal language in the profession
- Communication: meaning and process
- Levels of communication
- Kinds of communication: verbal and non-verbal, oral and written, formal and informal
- The purpose of communication in the modern era
- Why command of language decides advocacy
- How the examiner asks it
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