It´s not just legal English anymore

Since its foundation, Arias & Muñoz—“The Law Firm for Central America”—has strived to provide world-class legal services in line with the preferences and expectations of its growing number of global clients. Client surveys show that many now value not only strong legal English, but also a host of lawyering skills, including: excellence in cross-cultural communication, negotiation, advocacy, counseling, public speaking, networking, teamwork, project management, being tech savvy, and possessing business acumen. In our panel discussion, the Founding Partner will share the challenges he has faced in keeping his attorneys abreast of ever more foreign clients’ laws, languages, and cultures. Our Global Legal Skills Program Director will explain how Arias & Muñoz integrates its English and Writing courses into a larger curriculum, incorporates team challenges and mentoring opportunities to inspire employee participation, learns from legal experts from outside the region, and recruits in-house trainers from among top students at US law schools. Most importantly, two of our own clients – one an attorney with a US international law firm and the other an international investor—will define just what skills the global client values in a lawyer of any jurisdiction. We hope our experiences, insights, and best practices will enable conference participants to take “global legal skills” from an academic theory to a client-focused law practice for the 21st century global marketplace.