Legal Interpreting: 8 Facts to Know About Court Interpreters

In order to preserve a sense of fairness in a multilingual society, the U.S. court system has incorporated an official code of conduct for those working in the legal interpreting profession to follow. Legal interpreters are extremely important as they aid those with limited English proficiency (and/or the hearing impaired) in order to access justice. Though there may be discrepancies from state to state, there are core principles that every court interpreter should abide by.

In order to fully understand legal interpreting and what it will be like to work with a court interpreter, there are a few things you should keep in mind:

1. Were rarely employed in the past. It used to be the case that legal interpreters were only appointed in very rare cases, which left those who were not able to effectively communicate in English to struggle. Thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment, interpreting services for limited English-proficient and non-English speakers are essential in order for justice to be served.

2. Stress importance on accuracy over clarity. A legal interpreter must remember to always accurately interpret what is said in court and preserve the tone, inflection and emotions of the individual speakers, all the while speaking clearly. This means even if slang, obscene or colloquial language is used, the court interpreter must express those words. It is not a part of legal interpreting to simplify statements in cases where two parties don't speak at the same language level.

3. Avoid unnecessary conversations. A neutral attitude must be maintained by legal interpreters at all times in the courtroom. Therefore, it's best to avoid unnecessary conversations with them in that space.

4. Constantly learning. A court interpreter not only strives to improve their knowledge of language, but also that of law. They aim for fluency in legal diction, but are allowed bilingual and legal dictionaries to reference back to while in court.

5. Trained to blend in. Legal interpreters should be on time, dressed in business attire, have a sense of familiarity with the courtroom, and speak clearly. Other than that, they are to remain in the background and be as out of the way as they can possibly be.

6. Prepares for each case. It is usually required that legal interpreters review all materials provided by legal counsel in order to be prepared for an assigned case.

Some of these documents may include:

-Charges
-Police reports
-Official complaints
-Interview transcripts
-Indictments

7. Uses first person. Legal interpreters should firstly be comfortable with the mode of interpreting chosen by the court. Once they have identified themselves to the court, legal interpreters are usually expected to speak in first person when they are interpreting for non-English speaks who are giving their testimony.

8. There is little margin for error. If they sense the quality of their work may decline due to something such as fatigue, interpreters are expected to inform the court. If they suspect they have made an error while in court, they must correct it immediately. If they suspect they have made an error after the testimony, they must ask for a conference with the judge to explain and correct the error in the record. If a court interpreter shows a lack of proficiency or preparation, or is unable to perform their job due to trouble understanding the speakers or finding the correct legal terms, they will be asked to withdraw from the case.

Affordable Language Services is a Cincinnati legal transcription service. In Cincinnati and across Ohio, they provide translating and interpreting services for other industries as well. Learn more about the company on their website at http://www.affordablelanguageservices.com/.

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Employment Screening: Facts Every Savvy Business Owner Must Know

Nine times out of ten, even the smartest business doesn't look for an employment screening service until they've already been victimized. It's normal for people to be unprepared - most people who haven't run into tragedy always think it can't happen to them. But if you take a few minutes to look at the facts, the pure shock will drive any thoughtful business owner to take action!

So, what do you need to know once you've decided to pursue employment screening? Here are the basics:

Fact #1: Employment screening companies are closely regulated by the government...

The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act requires you to give written notice when you're conducting a background check on a potential employee, and if you take any action as a result of that information, you have to tell them the details of what you learned. It's important to cover all your bases to avoid a lawsuit from a disgruntled employee. That's not all -

Fact #2: You can be held legally liable for failing to do a background check.

It's called negligent hiring. According to the results of numerous civil suits, employers are expected to have basic knowledge about employees that interface with customers and the public. According to USA Today, Employers lose 79% of every negligent hiring suit that's brought to court. And the average jury plaintiff award in employment law cases? Over 1.6 million dollars!

Fact #3: Criminal history alone isn't always grounds to dismiss an employee.

The prospect of hiring someone with a criminal background can make many business owners nervous. But legally, your nervousness isn't grounds for dismissal. A prospective employer has to take the seriousness of a criminal offense and its relevancy to your industry into account before taking any action.

Fact #4: Online screening services are a waste of time.

If your business is on a budget, you can be tempted to pay a few dollars a month to membership to a website boasting some massive national database for employment screening.

But the vast majority of online background checking services check in the state or county of residence for the subject. In many cases, that's completely harmless, but if you've actually got something to hide, wouldn't you take some basic action to elude those kinds of searches?

Fact #5: Criminal record searches aren't through.

Public records and criminal background searches don't give a complete picture of an employee or prospect. You should also give thought to:

Aliases.Active arrest warrants.Civil suits.Social media profiles.Other jobs websites.

If you aren't looking at that, then you're getting left behind and missing out on possible red flags. It's vitally important to check out all possible leads relating to the background of a prospective employee. Who they talk to, their conduct after hours, their public profile, and other items from their past could come into play.

A quality private investigator can go a long way in streamlining the employment screening process. A lack of resources isn't an excuse to skimp on this - in business, your success depends on your word and your reputation, and the people you hire have a greater impact on that reputation than almost anything else.

If you want to get professional advice on employment screening, contact Huntting PI right now at http://www.privateinvestigatorservices.org/ for a no-cost, no-pressure consultation.

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Law School Essay Exams - Focus on Key Facts

"Legal problem solving - identifying and diagnosing problems and generating strategies and tactics to achieve client objectives - is a legally trained person's most basic function. Most legal problem solving activity involves some legal analysis - combining law and facts to generate, justify, and assess a legal problem's merits." (Legal Services Practice Manual: Skills, 2010)

All lawsuits arise as a result of disputes involving facts. Our legal system revolves around resolving disputes through the application of rules of law to the facts of a case. Yes, trials and appeals are about "law," but remember that the trial court judge, or the jury, is referred to as the "trier-of-fact." Determinations of facts are so important that the Bill of Rights guarantees that facts once decided by a jury are pretty much the last word. The seventh amendment provides that, "...no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law." This clause forbids any court from reexamining or overturning any factual determinations made by a jury, unless the factual determinations are clearly erroneous.

The two major components of the dispute resolution process are the applicable law and the facts of the dispute. In the professional practice of law, you will be sifting through the case file to identify which of the hundreds or thousands of facts produced by discovery (for example, witness statements, deposition transcripts, answers to interrogatories, photographs, and correspondence) are "key" facts. Key facts are those facts that are critical to the outcome of the case. A key fact is so essential that if it were changed, the outcome of the case might well be different.

In law school, you are practicing this skill of focusing on facts - in order for you to learn to assess legal problems, you must be able to find the important facts... the key facts, the facts upon which the outcome of the issue in question depends. When writing an answer to a law school essay exam question, you must ferret out these salient facts from all the facts presented in the narrative. Think of them as keys that unlock point-scoring issue discussions.

But how? Here are the basic steps to determining which facts are key facts.

Identify each claim possibly raised by the exam question.State the rules that will be used to resolve each issue of each claim. These rules include the elements which need to be addressed in the discussion of each issue.Pinpoint which facts in the question possibly relate to the elements of those issues.

This last step involves determining which facts may be legally significant. Legally significant facts might be, for example, that a tenant with an eviction notice has never been supplied with hot water; or that the shooter was an off-duty policeman; or that a party to a contract may have been a minor; or that the geographical distance between the provoking incident and the killing may have been long enough to provide adequate time for a reasonable person to "cool off" the heat of his passion.

After outlining your answer, read through the exam question one more time carefully and quickly (you should be quite familiar with the question by this time, so the reading can go much faster than it did the first time through). Make sure you have assigned all the facts presented in the hypothetical question (the exam) to some issue. If not, ask yourself if these facts suggest another issue, can be used to further explain an issue you already noted, or are merely "red herrings" (facts in the question which might lead you to an errant discussion). Then use this fact-rich outline as a roadmap for answering the question. Note that your outline need not include explanations of why facts are important - the detailed analysis comes in your answer. The outline is only your writing guide.

As for the outline, you may want to follow a traditional outline pattern (bullet points, hierarchies, mind-mapping, etc.)... or, to accent the fact-finding, you may want to think about a two-column approach. You can outline your answer using two separate columns. Specifically, you can list the issues in one column, and then note the facts that need to be discussed in relation to those rules in the column next to it. This method will allow you to match the issues or sub-issues of law with the facts of the question. Skimming through the question quickly (again) before actually writing the essay, you can quickly note if you have skipped over a fact.

Long before encountering exams, work on recognizing key facts. Focus on key facts when you brief cases for class. Some students find that including basic fact patterns in their self-made course outlines - as illustrations of the rules that appear in the outlines - helps them think of the rules in situational terms.

Many years ago, when I was a little boy, fictional Los Angeles police Sergeant Joe Friday, hero of the "Dragnet" television series, used to say to witnesses he interviewed, "All we want are the facts." Well, there's more to it than that when you're trying to score high on a law school essay exam... but Sgt. Friday was zeroing in on one of the two essential components - you should too!

Law students: start now to practice being the kind of lawyer YOU would hire to represent YOU if your life or fortune depended on having the best advocate working on your behalf. The "practice" of law begins NOW. To learn more, visit http://www.dennistonsing.com/.

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The Essential Facts Of Commonhold

Most buyers of apartments are relatively familiar with the idea of leasehold and are aware they are able to use the law to assist them acquire their share of freehold. An alternative choice theoretically is a conversion to Commonhold. But all is not as easy as it appears.

Commonhold is a relatively new style of land ownership in England and Wales which was implemented in 2004 and was first introduced in the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002. It is intended to be a substitute to the long leasehold structure and is essentially freehold ownership of individual apartments, houses and non-residential units within a building or an estate. There are few commonhold experts in the UK but those that there are generally members of the Association of Leasehold Enfranchisement Practitioners.

The rest of the structure or estate forming the Commonhold is owned and maintained jointly by the flat owners who are generally known as 'unit-holders', through a Commonhold association. Ownership is not restricted to a specific number of years, which distinguishes it from leasehold ownership where there is a lease contract - generally something like 100 years - with the freeholder.

Commonhold is uncommon but not unique in home ownership around the world and resembles strata Title, which has been used in Australia for around fifty years. It is furthermore much like a variety of other property-owning systems throughout the world, such as condominiums in the US.

A Commonhold consists of both 'units' and 'common parts'. The common parts are any part of a development which is not a unit. This could include shared facilities for instance the stairs, roof or landings. The common areas are owned and maintained by a limited company referred to as the 'Commonhold association'. Membership of the Commonhold association is restricted to unit-holders. Therefore, unit-holders have 2 separate interests in Commonhold. The first is a direct interest in their unit and the second is an interest in the membership of the Commonhold association.

The Commonhold association is required to administer the Commonhold in accordance with the terms of the Commonhold Community Statement (CCS). The CCS sets out the extent of the Commonhold properties, the rights and obligations of the Commonhold association and unit-holders and types of procedures for dispute resolution. The Commonhold association has to be registered at Companies House and have both a memorandum and articles of association. The CCS, memorandum and articles ought to all be registered at HM Land Registry.

The most important benefits of Commonhold over leasehold are that:

Commonhold does not lose its value over time in the same way as leasehold apartments because it does not have a diminishing lease term - there will be only one suite of documents for the whole Commonhold - a landlord is not necessary - the Commonhold association and unit-holders manage the Commonhold - the Commonhold documentation is standardised, making it less complicated to ascertain unit-holders' rights and obligations

On the downside, the Commonhold association can never surrender a unit where the owner is in breach of the provisions of the CCS. This means it is very difficult to get back service charges. Under leasehold, the ultimate sanction - albeit an extreme and difficult one to apply - is to repossess the apartment from the title-holder.

There is, though, no 'right to Commonhold' (as there is a right to buy a freehold) and conversion is feasible only if each and every one of the interested parties concur. That means all the flat owners plus the freeholder. In the case of an existing leasehold development, in the event that all the leaseholders agree although the freeholder does not consent, it may nonetheless be feasible to switch to Commonhold if the leaseholders exercise their statutory right to collective enfranchisement (buying the freehold). By the time that the leaseholders have obtained the freehold, they are able to submit an application to convert it into a Commonhold.

The take-up of Commonhold has been quite low and it is estimated that fewer than 100 developments in the UK have converted from leasehold to Commonhold. Given the payback of buying one's share of freehold as well as the much greater familiarity of the housing market with leasehold tenure, Commonhold is not often an important thing for owners of flats.

Mortgage companies and the flat-buying public are conservative by character. Given that property is often the singly largest-value acquisition made by most consumers in their lifetimes, it is understandable that most are not willing to emperil their life savings on an untried mode of ownership.

Developers are not interested in general in Commonhold tenure and it is likely to be they who would drive new Commonhold creations, where all of apartments are involved. The existing freehold system allows an inherent extra value when building a development of flats. The developer will sell the apartments for example to people who wish to inhabit them. The developer can subsequently separately sell the freehold to investors and commercial entities that will get a return on their investment in the freehold - principally by way of the ground rent.

Commonhold does not inevitably overcome many of the perceived shortcomings of leasehold tenure moreover. Assuming that apartment owners buy their freehold from the current reversioner - probably using their right to buy under Section 13 of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 - each lessee with a share of freehold is practically their own freeholder. The lease therefore acts as a set of agreed regulations under which all the leaseholders are bound. Every shareholder then has a vote and part control in running the freehold company.

In the case of Commonhold, every leaseholder has a stake in the Commonhold company as a consequence is still bound by an accord. The equivalent sets of arguments and power struggles will arise between neighbours as with a development that has purchased its freehold. In fact, scores of developments that have not acquired their freehold blissfully allow the freehold company to coordinate many of the communal elements of the block or development, secure in the knowledge that they need not worry about the politics.

Thus, despite the fact that the concept of Commonhold is quite appealing and apparently very democratic, the practicalities in its application mean that it is hardly ever a genuine alternative to address when lessees want to take more control of the developments.

Andrew Szebeni is a part of the Association of Leasehold Enfranchisement Practitioners. ALEP has 130 vetted members including solicitors and surveyors. How to buy your share of freehold

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