KYIV – On March 29 an award ceremony took place in Nobles office. The ceremony marked the end of the program “Plain English for Lawyers” organized by the law firm Nobles together with UBA Students’ League and with help of Professor Christopher Kelley. The program consisted of free language workshops and a writing contest with cash prizes for the winners sponsored by Nobles.
Professor Kelley opened the program with his workshop on plain English as an effective style for lawyers and its key principles. In the second workshop, Roman Shulyar, partner at Nobles, discussed the use of plain and more formal language styles in different legal documents, talked about how to structure a document and gave practical recommendations for legal writing from the perspective of a practicing lawyer. Nobles’ Partner Volodymyr Yakubovskyy who was the third speaker in the course also gave a practical view of plain English by showing how formal and complex lawyer’s writing has to be at each stage of an M&A transaction. The final speaker was Katerina Sergeeva, the PR Manager of Nobles, who spoke about the qualities of good writing and illustrated its principles through various excercises.
At the end of the course the participants could partake in a writing contest, which envisioned writing a memorandum. The jury comprising headed by Professor Kelley and Roman Shulyar have selected the following winners: Yulia Vavruschuk - 1st place and UAH 10,000, Krystyna Tsymbaliyk - 2nd place and UAH 5,000, and Daria Shabasheva - 3rd place and UAH 3,000.
For Nobles, the program has made a full circle: initially Professor Kelley conducted the workshops on plain English for Nobles’ lawyers but then the idea emerged to reach more legal minds with these ideas.
