Craft, Clarity, and Career with Rebecca Lockwood

Welcome to Studying Law Around the World. I'm Claudio Claus. In each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students, and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life. We talk about the hard parts, the surprises, and the decisions that shaped their paths. Whether you're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world, this podcast is for you. So many of the guests on this podcast have talked about how important it is to have strong writing skills as a lawyer. It's true, written communication is essential in this profession, but it can also be one of the trickiest skills to master. If you find your writing feels a bit clunky, or you're getting a lot of edits on your work, or perhaps you're breaking into an English speaking jurisdiction for the first time, Grammatica International can help. I'm Rebecca Lockwood, the lawyer, mediator and educator behind Grammatica, and we help lawyers and law students to write more sharply, speak more clearly, and advance their careers with group training and one-on-one skills coaching designed just for legal professionals. I have worked with so many lawyers like you who are exceptionally smart, qualified and capable, but need a bit of guidance to stand out in a competitive legal market. And I get it myself, having lived and worked in five countries during my 17 years in law and education. Whether you're looking to sharpen your writing skills generally, refresh your CV, or draft an application for a law program, Grammatica can help. Visit gramatica.co to learn more. This episode of Stunning War Around the World is proudly sponsored by ITL Prep from imant Exam Prep, the comprehensive resource designed specifically for internationally trained lawyers preparing for DMCA exams. 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And right now we're offering something special as an exclusive offer for the Studying Law Around the World podcast listeners. ITL Prep is offering 50% off all courses for the 1st 50 purchases. Simply use the promo code ITL 50 at checkout. Casebooks and other resources must be purchased separately. Visit imans dot C today. That's emond and use promo code ITL 50 to claim your 50% discount on NCA exam preparation courses. Today I have the opportunity to interview Rebecca Lockwood, who is the founder of Gramatica International. You've heard his name in the podcast before, but you haven't heard about incredible career that Rebecca has built for herself. She has a career that spanned across multiple jurisdictions and since 2012 has been helping lawyers around the world should improve their legal writing and in many other settings. Thank you so much for joining us today, Rebecca. Thank you so much for having me, Claudia. Thank you so much. Just start podcast. I just wanted to ask you before we get into questions, for you to introduce yourself to your audience so they can get to know you a little better. Well, I mean, your intro was, was pretty on point. I, I'm a lawyer and mediator and educator and I've been working in law for about a decade in all of these various roles. And I was a teacher before that for a number of years. So I've sort of combined my education background and my law background into Grammatica and I continue to sort of practice in different areas alongside it as well. I'm a Canadian transplant in Australia. Now at the moment, I've bounced around quite a bit over the last well in my adult life. And I have, I've got 3 little little kids and I've got a very nomadic husband, which is part of the reason for that bouncing. And yeah, that's, I don't know, that's there's so much to say and I don't she doesn't. That's a mean and nutshell at the moment. Amazing. Well, I'll be talking about all those details now then. So I, I was reading your profile online to, to get ready for this podcast episode and I read a very, very interesting story that you've shared about a subway conversation that you had with Ukrainian lawyer and that that might have, you know, being one of the things that's parked you to start Grammatic International. So can you tell us a little bit about that experience? I'm definitely clouded out that that was the birth of Grammatica. That was, that was the catalyst, Absolutely. So I was, it was August 2012. I was on the train coming home from an evening out with friends or at work, I can't remember, but I was on the trained. It was, it was a summer evening and I just sat down beside this young man and we started chatting. And it turned out he was a lawyer from Ukraine and he was designed to break into the legal profession in Canada, in Toronto in particular. And he was a bit down about it. And he started telling me about the struggles he had, the challenges he was facing. A lot of it was cultural, like not having a community built in, like a JD student would have that where you establish that community over the course of three years of really intensive study. He was sort of trying to break in. He had already been practicing in Ukraine. He had, you know, he was wasn't a very senior lawyer back home, but he had practice experience under his belt. And he was coming to Canada and starting afresh. And he just found it really, really challenging to to to get in. A lot of Canadian employers wanted Canadian experience and he didn't have Canadian experience and no one would give him a chance to get his foot in the door. And it was just one of those recycle that that was the first time I'd heard it, but I've heard that very similar story since. And one of the other things that he talked about in that conversation was the challenges with language. So he was fluent in English, but he didn't realize what a steep learning curve it would be to work and study and practice law in Canada in English, like legal English was its own language. And it had a style, a structure and expectation and a certain nuance that he just didn't didn't have and didn't know he he was struggling to get his head around that skill on top of the other sort of just breaking into this new jurisdiction challenge. So this in August 2012, I personally was about to start my second year of law school. So I was still in law school myself, but exactly 1 year before that conversation, I had just left Spain where I had been teaching as an English teacher. I was working primarily with professional adults and preparing them in English for their specialty, whether it was dentistry or architecture or teaching, and taught a lot of teachers as well. And so I was like fresh on the heel of this career in language education. And as I was sitting there talking to this young man from Ukraine, of course, I was super interested as a law student and a future lawyer myself. I was also so sort of curious about his experience as a language teacher. And so we said our goodbyes, I got off the train. I just couldn't get that conversation out of my head. I was, you know, I was just thinking about it and thinking about it. And the thought that kept coming back to me was I, I could help him. Like now I have the skills, I could create a course for him in legal English like tomorrow and teach him next week to help him overcome that particular hurdle. Because I've been teaching English overseas for a number of years. And I had all of that kind of that material, that knowledge, that way of thinking already. And and not only that, I felt that what he talked about sort of needing a bridge into sort of the Canadian legal industry and profession and community. That was the idea of potentially myself being that bridge and helping people land softly with encouragement and support in a new country, in a new language, in a new, not new profession, but new jurisdiction. I was like, I would love to do that. And so my mind was sort of all over this at the moment. And I came home and within 24 hours, I had come up with this business idea. I had come up with the name Gramatica. I had done been doing research and there weren't really any legal English programs at the time. And within a week, I had the business set up and registered. And within a month, I had a logo on a website and like it was running. And I just knew that there was me like this was a little niche that I knew personally I could really give my all to and be really passionate about. And I would, I just bought the idea of working with lawyers from around the world was, was amazing. Like I just thought it was, that was so cool. And I, I didn't at the time know how or sort of when it would launch or evolve. And it has definitely evolved and it's gone in different places than I expected then. But that conversation with the Ukrainian lawyer was the, it was the birth of this idea. And it very quickly came together. I don't know. I had didn't keep in touch with him. I regret so much that I never, we never exchanged details because I would love to see where he is now and how his experience went. And just to say thank you as well for that conversation because he, he has led me in an, in a direction that he probably has absolutely no idea, like how powerful sharing his experience with me would be. So that that's a little bit of my origin story. And I'm happy to say I've spoken to a lot more and worked with a lot more lawyers in similar positions and hopefully help them land softly on their feet or just just help the transition a little bit because it's, it's a transition for. Sure. Amazing. And if I may ask you, since you know you've been over 10 years now in this position and in being entrepreneur in this area, are there a few specific gaps that you see more often when you look at legal education or when you look at people who are trained abroad? Yeah. So when I started out in 2012, I was thinking about grammatical and the services I could provide as legal English, sort of like a specialty, as an English as a second language program, the way that you might find business English out there. And there weren't that many legal English programs, certainly in Canada at the time. There's only one. In the Europe, there was a couple. In the US, there was a few and it's grown since then in the last decade. But Gramatica has also kind of evolved to be more legal writing and legal skills, not just legal English from the English as a second language point of view. Because I don't only work with internationally trained lawyers now, I work with lawyers, most, most of whom are kind of in the 1st 5 or 10 years of practice. Maybe they're entering a new jurisdiction from abroad or they're just starting out and just need a bit of help and they feel like this is an area where they could use some guidance and support. But what I found was that whether it was legal English language focus or legal writing skills focused, a lot of the programs that are offered are extended programs. They are part of institutional bigger institutions. It covers a certain number of months. It's been more of an investment of time and money, and it's often by academic. And one of the one of the goals I have with Grammatica in the courses that Ioffer and the services that Ioffer is that it's hyper practical so that you can sort of walk away with skills and tips and ideas that you can apply. Like immediately, like I want you to leave the workshop and go sit down, looking at your submission to court and say, OK, actually, I can I can rework this and I know how to rework this now. So the focus on the practical is one of the gaps and also delivering it in a kind of more bite size CPD like program. So you can do it. Maybe it's a workshop series or a one-on-one help or, you know, a single course, but to deliver it in sort of a tighter package rather than like a three credit course that's part of another program, which is, which is helpful and useful when it's part of a program. Like you need to do that. I teach those courses in other programs as well. But with dramatic in particular, it was like the idea was that I thought there needed to be a really factis focused legal writing force out there that didn't cost the earth, that didn't take up, you know, a whole year of your time. And you got really sort of individualized feedback that you could apply to your your work in practice, like the next day, as I said before. So, you know, it's, it's an evolving space and I think it's, it's one that a lot more lawyers and law schools and institutions are taking note of. When I started, there was, like I said, there was very little out there. And there's more out there now. And like Sealed, for example, is a program in Canada. And I think that was a great initiative by the NCA to introduce that because just just as a as a basis to make sure everyone was sort of working, everyone entering from abroad was working with a similar skill set or could sort of fill in some of the gaps in their skill set. But certainly, like CPET is still a program that's more uniform for wide audience. And what I'm trying to do in addition to sort of complimenting a program like CPID for lawyers coming to Canada or other jurisdictions, but Canada in particular, is to, yeah, awful that to the personalized touch and that really practical touch. And like, let's talk about what a factor should look like. Let's talk about how do we think about the judge and, and how do we read their decisions to understand their nuances and where they lean and how you can craft your argument to fit the reader. Not that you always know who the judge is going to be, but you know what I mean? Like it's a little bit more. We have the the flexibility to really work with material and people to figure out what they really need from a legal writing course. Fantastic. No, I can see that there is a very different approaches that can be suited to each person and and I really appreciate that. I feel like that just makes it even even more useful. But I'd love to hear a little more about your story as well. So for what I've read here, you studied all is good how article here in Canada even argued cases up to the Supreme Court. And I'd love to hear a little bit about this early legal practice of yours and and how that also influences your approach as an educator and as a mentor these days. Yeah, absolutely. My time as a refugee immigration lawyer was and is a sort of a key central tenet to my identity, professional and personal. I feel I'm, I really am an advocate at heart and it's an area that I hope to go back to down the road. I had an incredible articling experience. I kind of laugh about it, that it was like articling on steroids. I worked in an incredible firm with Barbara Ackman, who does a lot of test cases in the area of refugee and immigration law and works a lot with just promoting non citizen rights. And it's a cause for me that was very personal to my family background, my own story and my sort of moral intellectual interests as well. So working with Barb was just like astounding. We were at the Supreme Court with her. I sat second chair at the Supreme Court as an articling student before I even got called to the bar. And that was like absurd, but it was incredible. And we were at the we were at all different levels of court and and I was working in the tribunal on my own and it just what it really did. I think those years of articling at such an intense level, but then also starting my own practice in association with Jacqueline and Associates and running that for a few years, was that I understood what advocacy looked like. And I understood the importance of written communication or written advocacy really, and what persuasive language looks like. Because all of everything that I was writing was for a court or a tribunal or a department. And I was always advocating for a particular position for a particular client. And I wanted the reader to agree with me to grant whatever, whatever their application was, I wanted them to grant it for my client. And so there was, I had to learn pretty quickly, pretty well how to write persuasively without exaggeration, but with clarity and reason to get the desired result. And, and you know, one of the things I just mentioned was understanding your audience was something that we, that was taught to me that I put into practice in a real way. And just really like honing the skills of persuasive legal writing was central to my learning and experience as as a lawyer. And I think that, you know, now I'm teaching those skills to others and I have been teaching them through Grammatica, through different law schools and institutions around the place. That practice experience was so fundamental to me. Now I feel that teaching well and teaching with the practice focus, obviously you need to keep your finger on the pulse of what's happening in the legal world in practice. And those few years of such intense, and this was, was so crucial to what I'm doing now, even if I'm not practicing in the same way that I was. That's so exciting, That's amazing. And, and going forward, I've, I've read here that you've lived in Spain, the UK, India, now in Australia. You mentioned that a little bit on your introduction, but I also would want to hear a little more about these international experiences and also how have they shaped your perspective on on law, on legal education. I'm sure that you also interact with URL for many countries beyond those in your professional activities. Definitely. So I think, I mean, I guess my immigration practice helped me understand the challenges of the literal immigration process. And being an immigrant and an internationally trained lawyer in different jurisdictions myself helps me understand those challenges very personally. So I understand it technically as an immigration law practitioner. I understand it personally as an individual who has gone through it. And one of your other guests, how do you have on your podcast talked about the emotional baggage of, you know, working or trying to break into a new jurisdiction as an internationally trained lawyer. Not only are you looking for a job and only are you looking to retrain and re skill and sort of get up to speed with this new jurisdiction and new practice area. Potentially you are also dealing with the emotional baggage of leaving your home country, leaving your family, starting afresh, perhaps bringing your dependence with you. And there's, there's a lot, there's a lot of emotion to that. It's not just pivoting to a different for different career or a different, you know, I mean a different job. There's a whole very holistic, complete experience to move country or jurisdiction and set up Shaw afresh and everything. You're fresh. I think being my international experience around the world has really helped me understand what so many of the people that I work with are going through from a really personal place. And I think that helps to build trust with my students because I know what they're going through because I'm I'm going through it or I have going through it in different ways in different places. And then on like the law and the, the writing sort of technical side of things. I also have seen very personally and very in depth how every jurisdiction does have its very particular style. So even, you know, English speaking comma, most systems like the US and Australia and Canada are not US, UK and Australia and Canada, even though they are all sort of based on the British system and they have very similar common law systems. They're, they have different small, tiny nuances in the way that they, whether it's the way that you draft an essay for law school or the way that you network there. There's different, there's a different style, but culture is different. And so being attentive to that and being exposed to that has really beneficial when it comes to me teaching those things, whether I'm working with students moving to Canada or lawyers here in Australia, where I am, I can kind of, I have, I have had to adapt to all these different styles myself. And so I'm better equipped to teach that how to adapt from, from a writing perspective as well. Some, some jurisdictions like Spain and India have, it's not just a small cultural nuance, it's, it's a very, I mean, obviously Spain and Canada have totally different language systems, but the style of legal writing, for example, in Spain and India, it's almost literary long prose in legal writing is the standard and the norm. And that's how you should write in those jurisdictions. Whereas in Canada and Australia and the UK, there's more of a shift towards plain English point first writing, simple, but clear and straightforward writing. And so when I work with lawyers from jurisdictions like that, you say, but that's, you know, why Rebecca, how can you tell me that I should simplify? Like this is I have a complex idea and therefore I need to use really complex language and sort of understanding what that looks like. Because I've worked in those different countries myself, Not all of them, but you know, I've worked in other countries where I know what the style is and how different it can be. Again, it's easier to teach because I know that they're starting point or I know the gap between where they're coming from, what's the norm for them and where we're trying to get to in their new jurisdiction in English. That's been hugely beneficial to me. No, I know all of these. I know both sides, whatever side that is. I've been lucky enough and privileged enough to, to, to live in different places and be exposed to different areas of, of law or different jurisdictions of law. And what that takes really to to adapt and succeed. Invite it's, it's been great to learn a little more about your experience and all that you've done through your career. I found here that beyond, you know, teaching at your own company, you also nowadays teach at Osgood Hall and you've served as a senior lecturer and program manager at the University of Law in Manchester in the UK. I also would like to hear a little bit about that experience and and maybe what lessons did you learn from leading in that academic setting? So my, my experience in sort of higher legal education has been ongoing since since I really got out the gate of law school since. So I've been working as an adjunct instructor at Osgood in the professional development program since 2014. And then that was just as an adjunct. I, I'm still doing that. I, I've all I've always taught there alongside whatever other jobs or places where I was working, which has been a fantastic sort of line of consistency and relationship to build with an institution like Osgood. And when I move to the UK and started working at the University of Long Manchester, I got the opportunity to teach and also work on the management side. Having that inner insider knowledge of how universities work and how law programs work, not just from the teaching perspective, but the the management perspective was really eye opening to me. And it's not, you know, something that a lot of people are exposed to. You sort of sit maybe will mean we've all been while students at some stage for lawyers. So we know very well what it's like to be on that side. But what really stood out to me and what I wish I had known as a student myself was that when you're studying in a law program, it's often very competitive, very intensive. The pressure can be high, whether it's your own pressure that you putting on yourself or the pressure you feel from family or you, the pressure you feel from your peers, just just sort of diagnosis. It is it's an intense process. And we often feel like we're struggling or we're not performing the way that we want to. There's some shame in that. And there's there's stigma around, you know, not doing as well as you hope to be doing, especially in law. And sometimes I think law students in particular struggle in silence and isolation because they don't want to come forward and, and talk about it. And one of the things that I learned working as a manager in different programs in the UK was that the universities actually don't want anyone to fail. They and they have the resources to help and support so much and there's so many different ways that that can happen. There's actually quite a lot of flexibility. But we don't, you know, but perhaps as a student, you don't know that you don't know what those options are. And I wish I had been able, I wish I had that insight at that when I was a law student to go and speak to sort of the management team, whether it was the student support office or the careers office or the this Dean of students to say, this is not, this doesn't feel like the way that I expected it to feel. I don't feel like I'm performing the way I should. What can we do about it? And so I was privileged to be able to be in that position in the UK to say to students, hey, you know what? And it looks like you're struggling with this on the nose. You're not coming to class or you. Emails for all the the stories you've shared and for the specific well, it's been so interesting to see lawyers speak at the the podcast and see you notice I'm getting at all so 10 years from when you started. It's incredible. So with period and like you sometimes you have sorry. Could be benefiting from from their university, the one. About that, I can't wait myself. As an instructor, I always good thanks for now and you know, I can be able to say to students, you know, you should go and speak to the man it's about. What you just said. I think that there's maybe there's something that we're trying to, maybe there's an extra being the way of working this, or maybe you're in the wrong stream. Maybe this isn't the right focus for you. Maybe there's, there's this different program that would be a better fit and then you would flourish more than feel, you know, sort of constrained or stressed about it. And the other, the other sort of lesson that I have learned working at Manchester, which was different to my other teaching, was that I got to work with undergrads who were doing law for the for the first time. And in Canada, you know, thank you so much. You have to study a different undergrad and then move on to your JD afterwards. There's there's not really any option to study law right out of high schools. But at Manchester, you know, I was working with mostly first years. I was teaching them introductory courses, legal writing, six constitutional law, public law. 18 is young, 18 is so young. And it was so refreshing to work with this group of, of people hung adults who were so fresh and new in the world. And we're entering law for the first time, like completely, I mean, not completely fresh. Obviously they've, they've had lots of life experiences and they have ideas about how things should go. But the skills of, of being lawyer or the actual substantive law, it was like the first time they were really exposed to that. And that was so much fun actually. And it really was a breath of fresh air and made me stop and question like, what am I taking for granted here as a lawyer myself with not just practice years, but like age years under my belt in terms in contrast to the, the young students that I was teaching. It was also so different, you know, had been teaching adults who were lawyers in different jurisdictions and they were coming with years of experience and practice and in life. And so then from like, not that they were even that much older than maybe they were sort of 26 further 18, but they had enough experience or had enough study to already come in. And we almost had to sometime working with international trained lawyers. You have to break open the mold, make students think like completely differently to what they know in order to learn the new style or the new skill and adapt to the expectation of the new jurisdiction. Whereas teaching in undergrad wasn't, it didn't require that sort of breaking out of the mold. It was a totally fresh experience. That was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun. And it it made me absolutely a better teacher and probably a lawyer as well. Yeah, So great question, Claudia there. I've done a lot of things. I've pivoted quite a quite a few times, but it it all sort of comes back to different ways to communicate in different ways to help people. I think. And I think overall, I mean, there's so many pieces of advice and you know, where to begin. I think the first piece of and probably the most important piece of advice to lawyers, whether you're an internationally trained lawyer jumping jurisdictions or a lawyer in the same jurisdiction. But starting out and in the early years of your career, I think being open to new opportunities to grow to big leaps across ponds, but being open is so helpful because there is no on linear path as a lawyer, you, you know, practicing law in a big firm and making partner is 1 track. And that's the track we often hear most about, but it's not the only one. And you can, you can move areas, you can move jurisdictions, you can move in and out of law. And that's one of the great things about having a law degree is that it is actually mobile and it, it does transfer. It is so useful. One of the best piece of advice that I got when I was in my, my first year of my JD program. And I was not happy. I was not enjoying it. And a couple of senior lawyers I sat down with said to me, Rebecca, if you can survive the JD, just do it, make it through the program and then do whatever you want with that, that degree, because the doors will open and you just will be able to choose which one you want to walk through. And so that being open is, has obviously I've been very open to different opportunities in different places over the last like 10 years, But it, it's, it's, it's brought a lot of great rewards. And I think the other piece of advice was to, as you're open, also be humble and embrace humility because I think that when we think that we are good and great and we we don't have any more room to grow, then we get stuck. And no matter how good of a lawyer you are, no matter how many years of experience you have already, especially, especially especially if you are moving countries or jurisdictions, there's always something new to learn and there's always a skill to expand upon. As great as we may be, we can always be better and we can always grow. And I think that sometimes we have to eat a little bit of humble pie in order to find that growth because that is really when, you know, the walls come down, you're actually embracing the new material or the new challenges in front of you. And you're, you're not stuck behind ego and, and maybe fear as well. So embracing the humility, embracing the fear. I think it's also a really big piece of advice that I would give to other lawyers on the beginning of their journey. Thank you so much for having me. And I also can't wait to see where you will be in 10 years because already you have done so much. And I've been, I have been following along not for very long, but the last like 6 months, I've been following along very keenly and very with much excitement. And so I can't wait to see where you are in 10, in 10 years either. Please keep in touch.