This college accreditation law-oriented Spanish language course is for those attorneys who are interested in improving their personal and professional Spanish proficiency while learning the realities and subtleties of the Mexican legal system from Mexican professors, lawyers, and judges. It is designed with a dual purpose: helping the attorneys initiate or improve their personal and professional Spanish language mastery, and becoming sufficiently aware of Mexican legal norms to know what expectations typical clients from Mexico have when they seek legal services.
How well can you represent a Latino?
A New CLE Course Teaches The Culture, Law and Language of Mexico
There are no open courtrooms in Mexico. There are virtually no courtrooms at all. If you go to “court”, you go to a small unimpressive office and submit written questions to a judge who will ask them, on your behalf, to a witness or opposing party.
Almost all “trial” work is written.
If you do get to ask an oral question, it must first be approved by the judge. If phrased negatively or provocatively, it will be rejected. There is no recourse.
A notary has more clout than a lawyer. All notaries are lawyers, but not all lawyers get to be notaries.
These are a few of the various things we learned in Guadalajara, Mexico at a unique CLE offered by Seattle University School of Law. We were taught the law, the legal culture, and some of the language, so we could better understand our Hispanic clients, and what ideas they may have in their heads about lawyers and the law when they step into our offices.
Some of us spoke Spanish; some of us were lost after “Buenos días”. It made no difference. The small classes were structured on a continuum of language ability, so beginners could make a start on learning the appropriate Spanish vocabulary, and bi-lingual attorneys could refine their understanding of current legal goings on in Mexico. Labor relations, immigration, real estate, domestic violence, family and criminal law were all discussed. All instructors were fluent in at least English and Spanish, so they could pitch their teaching on the right language level for each group.
The basic concept of the CLE was to provide an opportunity for us to improve our personal and professional Spanish proficiency, and give us an idea of the mind-set that a Latino-a might bring to explaining legal problems sitting across the desk from us in Washington. And we did come to understand that there might be important differences in attitude or expectation. For example, imagine the emotional shock of a Mexican litigant walking into a courtroom in Washington expecting the trial to be held in a 12x12 office at the end of a bustling hallway filled with overstuffed filing cabinets and harried clerks.
The goal was not to teach us Spanish or the law of Mexico per se. It was to give us an understanding of the way Mexican law operates, so we could have better insights into the assumptions our clients might have when they are embroiled in a problem or project in one of the content areas we tackled.
Did you know that there is still a presumption in favor of a mother for custody of children in a divorce, and a similar presumption in favor of maternal grandparents if neither parent is alive; or that only Mexican citizens can own residential property within 100 kilometers of a border or 50 kilometers of a coast, but that Mexican corporations are excepted and foreigners can own a 100% interest in Mexican corporations; or that you can get an emergency order from a federal court (an amparo) protecting you from arrest for 72 hours, while you gather and offer evidence of your innocence before you are even charged; or that there is no presumption of innocence in criminal law?
Not only did we receive exposure to law and the legal world, but we were introduced to the older cultures that created the traditions and customs that are alive today. We spent an evening in a cemetery (not for CLE credit) observing the celebration of the Day of the Dead (El Día de Los Muertos). It is a day when the dead are remembered with respect and affection. Altars are placed in homes and gravesites that are decorated with remembrances of the departed. Items are put on the altars that recall the individuality of those who are gone. Favorite foods are left for gourmets, a toy trumpet for a horn player, a small charm-sized bicycle or a rider, a shot glass of tequila for a drinking buddy. It made some of us wonder what would be left on our altars – a small brief, a cell phone, a PDA. It was a thought that was scarier than the figures costumed as ghosts that wandered the graveyard on El Día de Los Muertos.
The next morning, back in class, we learned: that native born Mexicans can hold dual citizenship, but naturalized Mexicans can’t; that if you were born in the U.S. to Mexican nationals you are a citizen of Mexico, but that status doesn’t extend to grandchildren of Mexican nationals born stateside; that there’s no employment ¨at will¨ in Mexico, but many employers make you sign a blank letter of resignation, in effect renouncing your right to secure employment before they will hire you. We learned about the law on the books and the law of the streets.
Se Habla…La Paz. has a long established reputation in the medical field with its courses in medical Spanish, and was looking to add another professional specialty. Many years ago its founder and director, Juli Goff, a former hospital administrator from Tucson, became frustrated with her medical personnel because so few of them could communicate with their growing Hispanic patient load. For that reason, and a number of others, she took a leap of faith. She went to La Paz in Baja, and opened up a language school that catered to people involved in health care. She found a language teacher named Antonio Reynoso Muñozo who was famed as a ¨magical¨ communicator, and he created the specialized curriculum for medical personnel. The school was so successful that it quickly grew beyond the field of medicine, and became a general Spanish language school with a specialty in medical Spanish. The school has entered the legal area with this course in the law and legal culture of Mexico. When they submitted the course proposal to the bar, the CLE committee gave it immediate support. They recognized that it offered benefits to an underserved population in Washington and to the attorneys who were willing to make the effort to learn more about the legal culture of their current and prospective clientele.