A NUMBER OF SKILLS TO TRAIN STUDENTS REGARDING CORPORATE LEGAL PRACTICE

[1] https://luatvandiendich.wordpress. com/2019/11/10/y-nghia-cua-phap-luat/ (accessed on December, 09^th, 2020).

[2] https://luatvandiendich.wordpress. com/2018/06/29/nguon-goc-va-y-nghia-cua-tuche-tai/ (accessed on December, 09^th, 2020).

Therefore, corporate legal department will perform the main of drafting, developing rules, protecting and controlling risks.

 

a) Drafting and construction role

Just like a state builds a legal system to regulate relationships in society, a business is also considered a miniature society. Rules and regulations are formulated for everyone to follow, ensuring the harmony of interests between employer and employees; between investors, shareholders and businesses. Usually, the internal legal documents of a business may include: Charter, Regulations, Processes, Internal Labor Regulations, Collective Labor Agreement, Labor Contract, Decisions, Notices, Minutes of meeting, etc.

 

In addition, businesses make transactions with other parties to perform business activities. Establishment of purchase and sale or cooperation relationship to recognize the rights and obligations of the parties are often expressed in the form of contracts, Cooperation Minutes, Memorandum of Agreement, Memorandum of Understanding, etc. Therefore, Corporate legal department is also liable to advise, participate in negotiations, review, draft and develop these documents.

 

Apart from that, business operation is also governed by provisions of law and guidance from state agencies. Therefore, Corporate legal department shall help businesses carry out activities in accordance with the law, carry out procedures for registration, declaration, and acquiring of licenses to operate.

 

b) The role of protection and control

Besides the development and drafting of documents, processes and regulations, corporate legal department also has to make sure those regulations shall be implemented properly and appropriately.

 

Controlling job meaning to supervise the compliance with internal regulations of the business, to provide guidance to help business in proposing and recommending to the authorities related to production activities, legal advice related to production and business activities, assessment of standing risks that could be encountered. In addition, the legal department is also the one to resolve disputes arising out of businesses operation with partners, between employees and employers, etc.

 

2. Criteria for the position of Corporate Legal Staff

Depending on the size of the business’s organization, the legal position(s) can be held by one individual, or by a group. Therefore, depending on the needs of each business (job position, industry of operation,…) the criteria for the position of corporate legal position shall vary.

 

However, the common requirements from a business with a corporate legal staff consist of basic professional knowledge of the law, ability to use computers and basic office software, skills in drafting and reviewing documents.

 

Finally and most importantly, corporate legal needs to have a legal mindset. Legal mindset means to always think and work out the most beneficial solutions for the business, but still in compliance with the provisions of the law.

 

II. A number of skills need to train students in preparation of future corporate legal practice.

1. Skills of approaching and note-taking information.

According to author Ivans Banki, “Skills is an innate or learned ability by which people apply their knowledge and experience to professional activities, a specific job and in specialized field”.

 

Thus, skill is the ability (capacity) to use and apply knowledge about a certain field to professional activities in life by practical experience through proficient manipulations as a habit to achieve a specific goal. For any job, especially for the corporate legal profession, the first skill needed is the skill of approaching (accepting), recording information or, roughly speaking, the skill of listening.

 

At a glance, anyone can tell that listening, or noting is very simple because we do it everyday, like listening to teachers lecture, listening to friends talk. However, it is just pure simple listening. It is very difficult to reach the level of a skill in listening, approaching, noting information, and judging the intentions of the communicator.

 

So, when a person comes to talk, initially you cannot know what the other person is actually trying to convey or what job they want you to perform, therefore you must listen proactively.

 

While listening, there shall be a lot of information. Some are important information that needs to be processed and resolved. Some are unnecessary, which are only supplementary or leading into main content, so you must listen carefully to filter the information.

 

Besides, in addition to listening, you also have to interact, communicate to finalize the issues you have talked about or ask a few questions to clarify and expand the issues for more information. Simultaneously with listening, you must try to understand the psychology, attitude, and expectation of the communicator, so that you can solve the issues with the best results.

 

In fact, while in school, there is rarely any course to guide or train students in methods to listen, approach information, and quickly note the information in the process. Failure to fully grasp the conveyer’s intentions and wishes lead to our omission or failure to complete the job.

 

Therefore, in the teaching process, the lecturer can convey and exchange like a normal conversation, giving the facts that he wants the students to answer, but also lead the story into the situation to make students get in the habit of noting content. Then, the lecturer can ask students what are the main ideas that they have conveyed and what issues required them to solve, in this way students will have a chance to think and reflect on the content that they have learned as well as summarize the main idea of the conversation.

 

Back to the fact that when exchanging information, in the process of listening, listeners need to pay attention and take notes of the main content and ideas. Because there are times when the person who conveys information speaks very much and fast, so it is very difficult to note down all the content, and the skill of quick note taking is often called a shorthand skill. Some quick tips for shorthand is to use symbols of your convention, or abbreviation, for example the word “Không” can be written as “ko”, etc.

 

And in law training, there is very little guidance or training for students in note-taking, summarization of document, conversation, or shorthand skills. Therefore, training for students listening skill and note-taking skill is essential, not only in legal practice but also in any other professions.

 

2. Communication skills

Besides listening skill, communication (talking) skills are also an important skill. This is a continuation from listening, to exchanging, talking to clarify matters.

 

Usually, the first time we approach a case, we may not fully understand the details and the nature of the case. Meanwhile, the communicator often presumes that the listener has already understood all the facts, so their presentation may be incomplete and omit a lot of both advantageous and disadvantageous details of the case. These are the actual thoughts and facts for us in work, which is also daily work of corporate legal staffs.

 

There are many departments and divisions in a business. Each has very different functions and tasks, so without communication skills, legal staff cannot understand the expectations and requirements of each department or division in the business.

 

However, for students, communication skills training is not properly focused. With an apprehensive, passive mentality, when students are given a situation by the teacher, they often immediately try to solve the situation without having any discussions with the teacher to clarify the details and expand the information. Meanwhile, with teaching situations, adding more details to a case is also an approachable way to make students think harder about3/3/20223/3/2022 the case. Because in practice, situations are not usually framed and unexpected details often arise outside of initial speculation, which can only be found through communication.

 

Therefore, when we work and exchange information, we need to communicate through asking simple questions to clarify details and suggestions for the communicator to properly present the facts.

 

In addition, in many situations, only through communicate that the other party will present their true expectations with regards to the case. While in the context of studying at school, we cannot know when the other party wants to communicate so that we can ask questions, we often rely on instinct only. There are several ways to tell such situation such as through the ryhthm of our voices, facial expressions: worried, nervous, angry, happy or sad.

 

Currently, on the internet, there are many video clips of legal situations, with actors acting so their expressions are very similar to reality. They can be shown to students to suggest students how to ask questions in each situation, and to judge the psychology of the parties.

 

3. Skills of searching and looking up documents.

 

Regarding the legal profession, the skill of searching and looking up for documents to solve problem is an important skill. For corporate legal staff, the consulting contents and issued documents will affect the operation of the business. Therefore, the settlement of issues must be based on the provisions of the law, each situation is a legal relationship, which are the governing laws.

 

In fact, each question, each practical situation is not only regulated by one law or code, but it can also be specified in guiding documents such as Decrees, Circulars, etc.; sometimes it is the documents guiding, directing, answering such as Official Letters, directives, etc. Therefore, when searching, we may feel that there is too much relevant legal information and wonder what is the correct source to search.

 

In the process of training a bachelor of law, there are very few guidance for students in searching and looking up for documents and they usually rely on the skills of each individual. Therefore, it is necessary to have specific guidance or training so that students can search and look up documents as quickly as possible.

 

On the basis of practical professional activities, the author finds that in order to solve this problem, the first step is to determine the legal relationship in the case that we need to solve. The legal relationships were already taught at school, now they need to be used for finding legal grounds.

 

Firstly, to go from general into the specific of a problem, for example a situation in civil law relationship, we shall need to see the provisions in the Civil Code, then specialized laws, or relevant legal documents. However, when searching for legal grounds, we must also understand the principles of applying laws to avoid conflicts of laws such as specialized legal documents shall be prioritized over general legal documents, etc.

 

In addition, there are now many websites that provide software and accounts to do the search. The help features are diverse, from viewing original legal documents, period statistics of documents, validity of documents, changes, amendments, and additions of documents. This shows us whether there are any provisions were clarified, analyzed and guided for application in another legal document. Some websites for your reference are http://thuvienphapluat.vn, http://luatvietnam.net, etc.

 

Therefore, in the teaching process, we combine instruction for students on how to use software and application to look up documents, and focus on analyzing for students the principles of applying law, dealing with conflicts of laws; can draw tree diagrams for students to get an overview of the legal system.

 

4. Document drafting skill

Besides listening skill, communication skill, document drafting skill is also an important skill of corporate legal staff. This is a daily and regular activity, which is thinking, inference, presentation and arrangement of sentences through document draft.

 

Students are taught formats of drafting and presenting a document. However, the practical application, practice, skills of this skill for students right from the time of graduation is still weak.

 

When receiving a request to draft a document, students are very confused about what kind should this document be, how to make an announcement, official letter, etc. The confusion in determining format of a document, layout of the presentation will affect the progress, the speed of resolution and sometimes the content presented in the document.

 

Therefore, when teaching, it is necessary to help students compare formats and layouts of different types of documents. In addition, it is necessary to clarify the nature and explain the reason to use each format of document so the students could understand and apply correctly.

 

In addition, the content of the exercises should only provide some facts, expectations and require students to determine what kind of document should be used, and to present how to draft the document.

 

In addition, some of the tips for drafting documents should also be presented to students such as referring to available documents to shorten the draft time. The documents that can be referenced are those issued by state agencies, because these are documents with standard format, accuracy, common use, and correct grammar.

 

Enough reading and reference will help the perception and thinking for drafting documents improve. When applied, drafting will help us indirectly acquire the knowledge of previous drafters.

 

5. Dispute resolution skill

According to the Sino-Vietnamese dictionary, “dispute” means a contention or struggle when there is disagreement, usually in the matter of interests between two parties. Regarding enterprises, their main activity is about commercial business, so disputes arise mainly from such activity. Thus, it can be understood that a dispute in commercial business is a disagreement, conflict of interests between parties in business activities, disputes can be internal of enterprises or disputes with partners, clients.

 

Disputes are something that no one wish for when carrying out commercial and economic activities. However, prevention is better than cure, so there are ways to limit disputes, or when disputes arise, there will be methods to resolve.

 

For a corporate legal staff, in order to limit the initial dispute, the drafting stage is important, if a dispute arises, it is necessary to have a way to resolve and limit the dispute. Here, some important skills in dispute resolution are pre-litigation, which means pre-litigation settlement works, such as negotiation, mediation. Or maybe ways to collect evidence, prepare documents for lawsuits.

 

Therefore, for students to have an overview of dispute resolution skills, there is only one way that is easy to understand and apply, which is to present a situation for students to solve. From the initial communication to approach the case, to determine the grounds for lawsuits, legal relationships, and the jurisdiction of the court to settle disputes.

 

After that, briefly outline the points, directions, and grounds to defend in the dispute settlement process, then build a set of lawsuit documents and attached documents. At each stage, dispute resolution skills have their own peculiarities.

 

For example, if you are in the negotiation and mediation phase, you need to separate people from the problem, focus on interests, not argue about positions, and create beneficial solutions. Normally, if we do not have proper skills, when resolving disputes, we often get caught up in arguing, insulting each other’s personality without offering a practical solution.

 

Besides, when resolving disputes, an important skill is researching and reading records. In order to study records with high efficiency, save time, and help to review, remember, analyze and evaluate the documents objectively and conveniently, the records being arranged in an orderly manner is definitely essential. Especially in complicated cases, a lot of documents and parties are involved in a case. There are several ways to organize documents, specifically:

 

Arrange records in volumes, by subjects, in chronological order. For example, first volume is divided into procedural documents, minutes and documents of the Court; Second volume contains documents and presentations of the disputing parties; Third volume is our own documents. When arranging, it should be arranged according to a timeline so that when reading, it will be possible to track the process and progress of the implementation of the agreements and leading to disputes between the parties.

 

After reading the records, evaluating, synthesizing documents and evidence in the case, determining the legal relationship to be solved, the next step is to determine which regulations will govern the case. The legal grounds consist of legal documents, guiding documents, or case law to find the way to resolve disputes. After determining the legal ground, it is necessary to figure out the direction and the points that we will show in the case.

 

III. Some solutions and recommendations to apply in the process of teaching and training for students to practice corporate legal work.

- Training more practical skills for students

In addition to teaching legal knowledge, it is also advisable to focus on teaching and training practical skills that can be applied for students; To create proactive attitude for students in research, it is necessary to give many cases exercises which is close to actual practice.

 

Regarding in-depth training skills to improve legal thinking, skills of drafting documents, resolving disputes, etc., clubs can be set up for students to practice and connect with business legal advice organizations based on the guidance and consultation of lecturers, people working in practice at enterprises, so that students can understand the actual corporate legal work.

 

- Training and teaching business law for students

Currently, the demand for corporate legal profession is very high while the current bachelor of law training can not meet the necessary skills of the position. Therefore, schools need to consider training and teaching basic business legal skills to students. The teaching should be associated with practical legal practitioners.

 

The teaching content can focus into the basic lessons such as:

1. Principles of state and law, courses on corporate, commercial and civil law;
2. Soft skills in drafting documents, presenting documents, drafting internal documents of enterprises.
3. Skills to prevent and resolve disputes such as clarifying common disputes of businesses and ways to prevent, skills of solving situations.

 

With proper training in skills related to corporate legal profession, students will be less surprised in their professional practice after graduation.

 

CONCLUSION 

Any successful professional activity requires a combination of specialized skills and knowledge. The role and demand of corporate legal position is increasing day by day, due to the expansion of businesses. Trading activities is a common market of the whole world, not limited anymore.

 

Besides legal background knowledge, it is also necessary to delve into training and teaching more practical skills in corporate legal practice, soft skills to apply the knowledge.

 

The innovations of education and training methods will be a prerequisite for students to catch up early, avoiding surprises when leaving the university to work./.

 

REFERENCES

1. https://luatvandiendich.wordpress.com/2019/11/10/y-nghia-cua-phap-luat/ (accessed on December, 09^th, 2020). 
2. https://luatvandiendich.wordpress.com/2018/06/29/nguon-goc-va-y-nghia-cua-tuche-tai/ (accessed on December, 09^th, 2020).
3. http://thanhtra.hochiminhcity.gov.vn/tintuc/Lists/Posts/Post.aspxList=f73cebc3%2D9669%2D400e%2Db5fd%2D9e63a89949f0&ID=3680 (accessed on December, 10^th, 2020).