Legal advice-giving communication in intercultural and multilingual contexts: challenges, complexities and strategies for success

律师和客户之间的有效沟通是提供法律意见的基础。然而，在法律实践的许多关键领域，包括在个人基本人权受到威胁的庇护和难民法中，沟通可能是一个巨大的挑战。作为研究金基础的博士研究项目调查了庇护和难民家庭团聚法律咨询会议中的跨文化和多语言交流。根据一位经验丰富的移民律师与一系列寻求庇护者和难民客户在英国举行的咨询会议的录音和观察，这项研究考察了来自不同语言或文化背景的律师和客户相互沟通的方式，以便提供和接受重要的法律建议。通过这个项目，我们了解了律师和客户在跨语言和文化的法律咨询沟通中可以使用的一系列策略，以及口译员在这方面可以发挥的作用。该奖学金的目标是与各种相关团体和个人分享研究项目的成果、从中获得的见解和实际意义。首先，该奖学金将支持法律咨询从业人员的参与，特别是那些在客户可能来自不同文化和语言背景的领域工作的从业人员，以分享研究结果并确定法律咨询实践中的实际应用。还将寻求法律教育者和口译培训师的参与，以便探索研究对法律咨询交流教育和培训以及法律口译培训的贡献。其次，该奖学金将支持提高英国寻求庇护者和难民社区以及支持他们获得法律咨询服务的民间社会组织的认识活动。通过举办讲习班和出版和传播实用的咨询意见，这些活动将提高人们对法律咨询会议的认识，客户如何准备，以及他们可以做些什么来促进与法律顾问的沟通。第三，研究金将通过出版物、演讲、学术交流和网络活动，将研究成果传播给一系列相关的学术受众。活动将侧重于利用研究在实践基础上产生影响的未来潜力。主要受众包括应用语言学、跨文化交际、公共服务口译、职业和临床法律教育、庇护和移民研究以及机构社会学等领域的学者和研究人员，对他们来说，研究及其结果对加强实践具有一系列意义。

Effective communication between lawyer and client is fundamental to the delivery of legal advice. However, communication can be a great challenge in many key areas of legal practice, including in asylum and refugee law where individuals' fundamental human rights are at stake. The doctoral research project on which the Fellowship is based investigated intercultural and multilingual communication in asylum and refugee family reunion legal advice meetings. Drawing on audio recordings and observations of advice meetings which took place in England between an experienced immigration lawyer and a range of asylum seeker and refugee clients, the research examined the ways in which lawyers and clients who come from different linguistic or cultural backgrounds communicate with each other in order to give and receive crucial legal advice. From this project, an understanding of the range of strategies that lawyers and clients can use in legal advice communication across languages and cultures, and the role that interpreters can play in this, has emerged. The goal of this Fellowship is to share the results of the research project, the insights gained from it, and the practical implications, with a diverse range of relevant groups and individuals.Firstly, the Fellowship will support engagement with legal advice practitioners, particularly those working in fields where clients are likely to come from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, in order to share the findings of the research and identify practical applications in legal advice practice. Engagement will also be sought with legal educators and interpreter trainers, so that contributions of the research to legal advice communication education and training on the one hand, and legal interpreting training on the other, can be explored. Secondly, the Fellowship will support awareness-raising activities with asylum seeker and refugee communities in the UK, and civil society organisations which support them to access legal advice services. Through workshops and the publication and dissemination of practical advice, such activities will raise awareness about what to expect from legal advice sessions, how clients can prepare for them, and what they can do to facilitate communication with legal advisors.Thirdly, the Fellowship will enable dissemination of the research findings to a range of relevant academic audiences through publications, presentations and academic exchange and networking activities. Activities will be focused on harnessing the future potential for practice-based impact of the research. Key audiences include scholars and researcher-practitioners in the fields of applied linguistics, intercultural communication, public service interpreting, vocational and clinical legal education, asylum and migration studies, and the sociology of institutions, for whom the research and its findings have a range of implications for enhancing practice.