A judge does not just read a legal memo — they read it looking for a reason to trust the lawyer who wrote it. That trust is built through clarity, precision and a structure the reader can follow without effort, and it is exactly what the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy's course on the Art of Drafting Legal Memos and Official Correspondence is built to teach.

A legal memo can be technically correct and still fail if it carries a weak spot in its structure or reasoning, so the person writing it needs sound legal judgement: the ability to draw conclusions from the facts of a case impartially, a solid grounding in the relevant laws and regulations, and the discipline to organise findings in the sequence a judge can follow with ease. Participants practise all of it through drafting exercises, from the underlying legal thinking to the finished correspondence.

Who Should Attend?

• Managers and owners of companies and institutions, and law officers.
• Staff responsible for legal departments in commercial companies, and legal affairs managers.
• Businessmen seeking to develop their legal skills, and staff working in legal management.
• Law students, graduates and trainee lawyers.

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Show solid familiarity with the different branches of law relevant to legal writing.
• Apply the skills needed to produce clear, professional legal writing.
• Draw on the information needed to provide sound legal clarification.
• Handle the practical procedures involved in legal disputes.
• Draft and document contracts in a legally sound, integrated form, and work effectively with judicial bodies, understanding their respective jurisdictions.

Module 1: Legal Management and Its Link to Memo Writing

• The concept of legal management as the umbrella under which memo writing sits.
• Building the legal-science grounding a memo writer needs before drafting anything.

Module 2: The Substantive Requirements of a Persuasive Legal Memo

• The substantive conditions that make a legal memo actually useful, not just formally correct.

Module 3: Formal Rules and Structure for Drafting a Memo

• The formal rules and structural conventions expected of a properly prepared legal memo.

Module 4: Constructing Legal Language and Sentence Structure

• Drafting skills focused on using precise legal language.
• Building a well-formed legal sentence, sentence by sentence.

Module 5: Memo Types by Purpose

• Defence memos prepared for courts and judges.
• Memos accompanying an administrative investigation.
• Examination and legal-research memos.