The labour functions of a professional as the basis for the ESP educational track designing when teaching future lawyers

Today, the language departments of domestic non-linguistic universities are quite seriously involved in the problem of verifying and designing the content of education in the English language for specific purposes, taking into account the latest challenges of the time, the requirements of the state and the labour market. The role of English for specific purposes of future lawyers is undeniable, since legal practice determines their constant study of highly specialized literature, normative legal acts, court rulings and decisions, protocols, etc., including in a foreign language, since these documents are rarely translated into Russian. Practice shows that now there is a conscious desire of students to study legal English, because in the future it will help them move up the career ladder, as well as practice international law and read the original sources. However, it should be noted that in practice, not all implemented educational tracks meet the needs of students and correspond to the labour functions of a lawyer, since foreign textbooks are often used for this without additional adaptation (International legal English, Absolute legal English, etc.), which were originally aimed at taking an international exam in the Legalese within the framework of Common or International law and do not consider the specifics (even linguistically) of the Russian civil law system. Further, the developers of the current Federal State Educational Standard strongly recommend that domestic universities and departments rely on the labour functions of a specialist verified by the Ministry of Labor of the Russian Federation in an appropriate Professional standard, in particular in the process of developing educational tracks in academic disciplines. This actualizes the appeal of practicing teachers of higher education (ESP teachers) to the analysis of the current labour functions of a lawyer, which form the basis for designing an educational track when teaching law students ESP, which is what this study is devoted to. This research is aimed at studying the specifics of the designing of an educational track when teaching future lawyers ESP based on their labour functions. The authors of the study present the accumulated pedagogical experience in designing an educational track in English for future lawyers at Financial University of Moscow. An analysis of the scientific works of research teachers and the accumulated pedagogical experience of teaching ESP allowed us to establish that, in accordance with the Draft of the professional standard "Lawyer" (project ID 01/02/03-20/00100744), four generalized labor functions of lawyers are distinguished: auxiliary activities in the field of professional services, legal support for the activities of legal entities, and finally, assistance Moreover, for individuals, judicial and managerial activities, the essence of which forms a meaningful component in the design of the educational track and the selection of ESP teaching methods based on competence-based and CLIL approaches. Fragments of language classes are given, revealing the content of the main labour functions of a lawyer, based on the case method (working with cases of judicial practice in contract law using the IRAC method), the "flipped class" method, a business game in the "Moot court" format (simulation of a trial) based on real cases derived from the world judicial practice. The vision and understanding of labour functions allows ESP teachers to correctly select, correct and interpret the educational material and the educational track itself; select appropriate teaching methods; explain to students how the studied material is reflected and refracted in their future profession, etc. The accumulated scientific and pedagogical experience and practice of teaching ESP at the Faculty of Law has convincingly shown that applying the above-described teaching methods are effective and justified from the point of view of developing the labour functions of future lawyers. The research conducted served as a definite impetus for the revision of educational tracks by scientists, as well as interested teachers, theorists and practitioners who are in a dynamic search for relevant approaches and appropriate methods of teaching ESP. Thus, reliance on the labour functions of a lawyer when designing an educational track for teaching English to the specialty of future lawyers will contribute both to improving their level of ESP proficiency and to a conscious immersion in the specifics of their chosen profession. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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