General English: Essay writing, comprehension, and rules of grammar

A client’s WhatsApp message says, “The builder was sued by us.” Your senior reads it and asks, “Who sued whom?” The sentence is grammatically correct, but it hides who did what. A lawyer who cannot control the actor in a sentence loses precision, and in a notice or a plaint, precision is everything. This topic gives you the tools: how to plan an essay, how to read a passage, and the grammar rules that let you say exactly what you mean.

In two minutes

Good legal English is planned, precise and grammatical: an essay with a clear structure, a comprehension answer taken from the passage, and sentences whose voice, speech, degree and tag are correct.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Legal Language on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.