!Экзамент зачет учебный год 2023-2024 / Кафедральный

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4.What/to be/for you/an ideal outcome?

5.This point/to be mentioned/in the contract, to be it?

6.Why/not support you/your colleagues?

7.Try/you/to contact/anybody else?

8.The goods/to have/to be delivered/within 30 days/didn’t they?

9.How/can/exactly/help you/I?

10.Fulfil/the obligations/completely/you?

Exercise 3.

Employ different techniques to soften the following phrases.

1.I will make notes as we’re talking.

2.The fees for my work are 1500 euros.

3.Give me background information about that.

4.We’ve dealt with that issue. Move on now to the question of exclusivity.

5.Tell me what your priorities are in this matter.

6.From a legal point of view, you must terminate the contract immediately and sue for damages.

7.Consider the tax consequences of taking that kind of step. I am not a specialist in this area, but my colleague Stephanie Willis is a very experienced tax lawyer. She will advise you.

8.I will handle this case for you. How do you want to proceed?

9.This point is not relevant to the issue. Focus on the issue of confidentiality

just for the moment and come back to this other issue in a minute.

10.OK, go over the details of this matter. After that we can discuss what to do and then we can think about the way forward. OK?

Exercise 4.

How do you understand the term “effective listening behaviour”? Why is it important for a lawyer to demonstrate it while speaking to a client? In small groups think of as many reasons as you can. Share your ideas with the rest of the group.

Exercise 5.

Work in groups of three. Study the role cards below. Spend around 2 minutes on each conversation and 1 minute on the feedback from the observer. Then change the roles.

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Student A – a lawyer

Ask student B questions about one of the topics listed below. Prepare a list of questions in advance to keep student B talking for 2 minutes. While listening, try to clarify some points and ask checking questions based on the words student B uses to get more detail and to make sure that you really understand the point.

Student B – a client

Answer student’s A questions and tell him/her as much as you can. If student A uses a term of art which might be unclear to you as to a layperson don’t hesitate to ask him/her to explain it to you.

Student C – an observer

Listen to the conversation and make a note of any listening behaviour the both sides employ. Which impact, positive or negative, do they have on the conversation? Give your feedback.

Role card 1

Your main competitor has recently started to bring down prices trying to attract more customers and monopolize the market. You are suffering great losses and losing your clients. You need legal advice to solve this problem.

Role card 2

Your ex-employee threatens to disclose the secret information about the manufacturing techniques used in your factory. He wants you to pay him for nondisclosure. You need legal advice to solve this problem.

Role card 3

You have a flat for rent. You are a law-abiding citizen and you are afraid of breaking the law. You need legal advice to solve this problem.

Exercise 6.

Choose a sphere of law you are good at or interested in. Think of possible problems that might bring a client to a lawyer. Choose one of the problems, describe it in detail and prepare for the initial interview with a client. While getting ready follow the checklist above.

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UNIT 2

Lead-in

Before reading the text please answer the questions below.

1.Why is it important for lawyers to master the skills of effective presentation?

2.What is a typical structure of any presentation?

3.What linguistic means are used to manifest the structure of the presentation?

4.What ways may be used to activate the audience and keep its attention?

5.What stylistic devices can make your presentation more emotional?

Skills of Effective Presentation

When people think of lawyers and public speaking, they mostly imagine trials and other hearings. Only a few know that a lot of public speaking by lawyers takes place outside the courtroom. As Samuel Pillsbury, a law professor at Los Angeles’ Loyola Law School notes: “Lawyers often speak to lay groups about various matters of controversy. They appear before legislatures, city councils, planning commissions, or give talks to civic groups, business executives, or company employees. Lawyers also may need to give media interviews on behalf of clients.”

Nowadays in business world there is a common expectation that all lawyers are strong communicators and masters at creating and delivering powerful and effective presentations. Public speaking is viewed by lawyers and their chiefs as a great way to market the law practice, because people perceive a lawyer as an expert on the topic he speaks about. Talking for 15 minutes in front of the right audience could do more for the practice than working for six months in the office.

If you are to speak in public, the first priority is to decide on the structure of your presentation. Your presentation should have a clear beginning, middle and end. An effective way of presenting is to start by indicating the topic of your presentation and the points you are going to make in support of this. Having singled out the major parts, think how you will interconnect them and present them in the logical sequence, so that your audience can easily follow your reasoning. In the middle of the speech make those points and in the conclusion summarize the points you have made and explain how they support your topic. This technique is sometimes characterized as the ‘tell them what you’re going to say, say it and then tell them you’ve said it’ approach. The main benefits of this approach are: (1) clarity, and (2) that it gives the opportunity to make each point at least three times in different ways, so that the audience is likely to remember at least the main points made.

Experts on effective public speaking are sure that any introduction ought to make an impact i.e. you should try to say something immediately that will make the audience want to continue to listen to you (e.g. ‘What I’m going to tell you today will fundamentally change the way this firm treats its clients’). It should contain a preview of what you are going to talk about (e.g. ‘in my talk today I will explain

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what needs to be done in order to increase the firm’s profits by 100 per cent in the coming year’). In the introduction you should show appreciation and respect to the audience (e.g. ‘I’d like to thank X for inviting me to come here today. I must say I have been very impressed by how friendly and professional everyone here is.’).

The structure of the main part of the presentation is manifested through proper paragraphing, connectives and choice of sentences. The passage from paragraphs is achieved through the use of adequate intonation pattern and pauses. But if you just make a pause trying to show that you are ready for further argumentation or points, you may either lose the attention of the audience or lose the connection between the points. That is why efficient presenters so often use special linguistic means to accentuate the connection between passages such as conjunctions (and, but, because, as), adverbs (firstly, secondly, initially, formerly, finally, etc.), prepositions (according to, before, after) and other language units (“there is a further problem of”, “in closing let me enumerate”, “now coming to the next point”, “thus we have seen that”, etc.). The primary goal of these phrases is to fill the gap between different blocks of thoughts and facilitate logical transition to the next idea.

Effective presentations are characterized by different types of sentences: declarative, interrogative and imperative. Presenters resort to the use of questions- in-the-narrative or rhetorical questions. They change the nature of a usual question and turn it into a stylistic device because it is asked and answered by the same person. These questions serve to activate the audience, because they stimulate a response and entice people to formulate answers – even in their minds. If you manage to get the audience to think about the question you ask, you get their attention. It is also important how you pose a question: pause after you ask it then present the answer with confidence. Questions may be a part of direct speech, which is close to a quotation, because they express an opinion that people may tend to have on a subject. In this case we can address our own thoughts and illustrate the process of reasoning

(e.g. Many times I have asked myself: “Can this statistic be relied on?”).

Another effective way to activate the audience is to address them, either directly or indirectly. Direct address to the audience is what you begin with in the first (e.g. Dear colleagues!). You may need to address the audience more than once. In the course of your presentation you may need to ask the audience to look at the hand-outs, to draw their attention to some visual aids, or even approach the problem in question at different angle (e.g. Let me evaluate the potential gain of this approach). Another way to address the audience is to make direct references using a pronoun or noun that can attribute to the audience (e.g. Lawyers like ourselves would immediately know the difference).

Using different types of sentences besides narrative, makes your presentation more interactive and helps us activate the audience for better understanding the message and your reasoning.

If you want to make your presentation more emotional and to appeal to your listeners, you may use such lexical means as metaphor and epithet. Originally, the term ‘metaphor’ means transference of meaning from one object to another. A

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metaphor becomes a stylistic device when the creator of the metaphor finds, in two corresponding objects, some features, which seem to have something in common. If you create an effective metaphor, you help your audience to remember the image for a long time (e.g. Flattery is the infantry of negotiation). Epithet is a very effective means of displaying the speaker’s attitude to the subject, because it is based on the interplay of emotive and logical meanings in an attributive word or phrases. The epithet is always subjective, because every speaker sees things differently, and helps the audience to see things from his standpoint. Some words like powerful (means), prime (significance), countless (negotiations), immense (contribution) demonstrate the attitude of the speaker to this or that concept.

In terms of functional styles, the style of the presentation is a subdivision of publicistic style. The basic goal of it is to exert a deep and lasting influence on the audience, to convince the listeners that the interpretation of the ideas given by the presenter is correct, and to get them to accept the presenter’s point of view. To achieve this goal, the presenter uses both logical argumentation and emotional appeal. These most effective tools find their expression in the language and the structure of the presentation. Coherent and logical syntactical structure with a system of connectives and paragraphing helps to keep the attention of the audience, while the use of words with emotive meaning appeals to the audience and creates the response to the message.

USEFUL PHRASES AND VOCABULARY

Introduction

Welcoming the audience

Good morning/afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

Hello/hi everyone.

First of all, let me thank you all for coming here today.

It’s a pleasure to welcome you today.

I’m happy/delighted that so many of you could make it today.

It’s good to see you all here.

Introducing yourself

Let me introduce myself. I’m Maria Wales from…

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is…

Let me just start by introducing myself. My name is…

Giving your position, function, department, company

As some of you know, I’m a senior lawyer.

I’m a key account manager and I’m responsible for…

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I’m here in my function as a head of…

I’m an associate in charge of…

Introducing the topic

What I’d like to present to you today is…

I’m here today to present…

Today’s topic is…

The subject/topic of my presentation is…

In my presentation I would like to report on…

Today I’m going to speak about…/I’ll be speaking about…

Saying why your topic is relevant for the audience

Today’s topic is of particular interest to those of you who…

My talk is particularly relevant to those of us who…

My topic is/will be very important for you because…

By the end of this talk you will be familiar with…

Stating your purpose

The purpose/objective/aim of this presentation is to…

Our goal is to determine how/the best way to…

What I want to show you is…

My objective is to…

Today I’d like to give you an overview of…

Today I’ll be reporting on…

I’d like to update you on/inform you about…

During the next few hours/minutes we’ll be…

Structuring

I’ve divided my presentation into three (main) parts.

In my presentation I’ll focus on three major issues.

Sequencing

Point one deals with…, point two…, and point three… First, I’ll be looking at…, second…, and third…

I’ll begin/start off by…. Then I’ll move on to…. Next/after that … I’ll end/finish with…

Timing

My presentation will take about 15 minutes.

It will take about 20 minutes to cover all the issues.

This won’t take more than…

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Handouts

Does everybody have a handout/brochure/copy of the report? Please take one and pass them on.

Don’t worry about taking notes. I’ve put all the important statistics on a handout for you.

I’ll be handing out copies of the slides at the end of my talk.

I can email the PowerPoint presentation to anybody who wants it.

Questions

There will be time for questions after my presentation.

We will have about 10 minutes for questions in the question and answer period. If you have any questions, feel free to interrupt me at any time.

Feel free to ask questions at any time during my talk.

Effective openings

Rhetorical questions

What does any restructuring mean from a legal point of view?

Do we really need quality assurance from our clients?

Interesting facts

According to the article I’ve read recently…

Did you know that…?

I’d like to share an amazing fact/some statistics with you.

Stories and anecdotes

I remember when I attended a meeting in Berlin, …

At a conference in Berlin, I was once asked the following question: … Let me tell you what happened to me…

Problem to think about

Suppose you wanted to…. How would you go about it?

Imagine you had to…. What would be your first step?

Main part

Saying what is coming

In this part of my presentation, I’d like to talk about…

So, let me first give you a brief overview.

Indicating the end of the section

This brings me to the end of my first point.

So much for point two.

So, that’s the background on…

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That’s all I wanted to say about…

Summarizing a point

Before I move on, I’d like to recap the main points.

Let me briefly summarize the main issues.

I’d like to summarize what I’ve said so far…

Moving to the next point

This leads directly to my next point.

This brings us to the next question.

Let’s now move on/turn to…

After examining this point, let’s turn to…

Let’s now take a look at…

Going back

As I said/mentioned earlier, …

Let me come back to what I said before…

Let’s go back to what we were discussing earlier.

As I’ve already explained, …

As I pointed out in the first section, …

Adding ideas

In addition to this, I’d like to say that…

Moreover/furthermore, there are other interesting facts we should take a look at. Apart from being too expensive, it’s also too time-consuming.

Rhetorical questions

What conclusion can we draw from this?

So, what does it mean?

So, how good are the results?

So, how are we going to deal with these complaints?

So, where do we go from here?

Why do I say that? Because…

Do we really want to miss this opportunity to …?

Describing visuals

Introducing a visual

Let’s now look at the next slide which shows…

To illustrate this, let’s have a closer look at…

The chart on the following slide shows…

I have a slide here that shows…

The problem is illustrated on the next slide.

You can see the test results in this table.

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As you can see here, …

Highlighting information

I’d like to stress/highlight/emphasize the following point(s).

I’d like to start by drawing your attention to…

Let me point out that…

I think you will be surprised to see that…

I’d like to focus your attention on…

What is really important here is…

What I’d like to point out here is…

Let’s look more closely at…

Conclusion

Indicating the end of the presentation

I’m now approaching/nearing the end of my presentation.

Well, this brings me to the end of my presentation.

That covers just about everything I wanted to say about…

As a final point, I’d like to…

Finally, I’d like to highlight one key issue.

Summarizing points

Before I stop, let me go over the key issues again.

Just to summarize the main points of my talk…

I’d like to run through my main points again…

To conclude/in conclusion, I’d like to…

To sum up, let’s…

Inviting questions

Are there any questions?

We have time for a few questions.

And now I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Dealing with questions

Clarifying questions

I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch that.

I’m sorry, could you repeat your question, please?

So, if I understood you correctly, you would like to know whether… So, in other words you would like to know if…

If I could just rephrase your question. You’d like to know whether…

Does that answer your question?

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Avoiding giving an answer

If you don’t mind, could we discuss that on another occasion?

I’m afraid, that’s not really what we are discussing here today.

Well, actually I’d prefer not to discuss that today.

Admitting you don’t know

Sorry, I don’t know that off the top of my head.

I’m afraid, I’m not in a position to answer that question at the moment.

I’m afraid, I don’t know the answer to your question, but I’ll try to find it out for you later.

Sorry, that’s not my field. But I’m sure my colleague from the Accounts could answer your question.

Postponing questions

If you don’t mind, I’ll deal with/come back to this point later in my presentation.

Can we get to this point a bit later?

I’d prefer to answer your question in the course of my presentation.

Would you mind waiting until question and answer section at the end of my speech?

Perhaps we could go over this after the presentation.

EXERCISES

Exercise 1.

Fill in the gaps with the words from the box.

Divided, put, responsible, leads, department heads, screen, aware, imagine, parts, introduce, schedules, suggestions, regarding, draw, present, consequences, first of all, mean, topic, concerns, sum up, finally, specific, go about, identify, run through, understand

1.Let me ____________ myself. My name is…

2.I’m here today to ___________our new system which makes the process of dealing with complaints easier.

3.As you can see on the __________, our __________ today is project documentation.

4.I’m ____________ that you all have very tight____________, so I appreciate you taking the time to come here.

5.Today’s topic will be very important for you as __________________ since I’ll need your help to evaluate and select candidates for training.