Legal English for Korean speakers: the transfer errors

Start with the fact that changes how you practise: the errors Korean speakers make in English legal writing are not random, and they are not carelessness. They are systematic transfers from a grammar that solves the same problems by different means. Korean is not a simpler language than English; it spends its complexity elsewhere, most famously on an honorific system English does not have at all. That means the English errors it produces are predictable, and predictable errors can be hunted deliberately instead of feared generally. This page maps the five transfers that matter most in legal writing, and gives each one a check you can run on your own drafts.

1. Articles: the decision Korean never asks you to make

Korean has no articles. Definiteness is carried by the topic particle, by the demonstratives 이, 그 and 저, and by context, so nothing in your first language rings an alarm when an English "the" is missing. In legal writing the alarm needs to ring roughly sixty times a page: "the plaintiff", "a contract" on first mention and "the contract" ever after, no article at all on doctrinal concepts like consideration and negligence.

One bridge does exist, and it is worth using: anaphoric 그. Where Korean would naturally say 그 계약 (geu gyeyak, that contract we mentioned), English wants "the contract". But the bridge only runs one way. English uses "the" in many places 그 would sound strange, so the 그 test catches some missing articles and never all of them. The full rules, in priority order, are on the dedicated page: Articles (a, an, the) in Australian legal writing. The Korean-specific advice is about method: because no instinct will warn you, articles must be a separate proofreading pass, run on every assignment.

2. Topic-marking and the vanishing subject

Korean marks the topic of a sentence with 은/는 and then lets it disappear. 계약은 무효이다 (gyeyak-eun muhyo-ida) is literally "as for the contract, is void": once the topic is established, later sentences drop it entirely, and Korean grammar is perfectly happy. English never is. Every English clause needs a grammatical subject, even a meaningless one, and this transfer produces two distinct errors in legal writing.

The first is the missing dummy subject. Korean has no equivalent of the empty "it" in "it is clear that" or the empty "there" in "there are three issues", so the transferred sentence reads "Is clear that the clause is void" or "In this case has three issues". The repair is to supply the expletive: "It is clear that", "There are three issues", "This case raises three issues". Note that legal English leans on these structures heavily and on purpose: "it is submitted that" and "there is authority for the proposition that" are core professional phrasing, so the dummy subject is not padding you should feel guilty about.

The second is the "as for" opener, a direct translation of 은/는: "As for the exclusion clause, the defendant cannot rely on it." One of these per page is fine; a habit of them is topic-marking wearing an English coat. The stronger sentence promotes the topic to subject: "The defendant cannot rely on the exclusion clause."

3. Relative clauses run the other way

Korean builds relative clauses in front of the noun, with no relative pronoun at all: 계약을 위반한 당사자 (gyeyag-eul wibanhan dangsaja) is literally "contract-breached party", where the verb ending 한 does the work English gives to "who". English puts the clause after the noun and, when the noun is the subject of the clause, the pronoun is compulsory.

The transfer error is dropping it: "The party breached the contract is liable." To an Australian reader this does not look like a missing word; it looks like a different sentence, one where the party WAS breached, and the reader stalls. The correct forms: "The party that breached the contract is liable" or "The party in breach is liable."

The reason this error survives proofreading is that English sometimes allows exactly this shape. "The contract signed on 1 March" is correct, because "signed" there is passive. So the check is precise: find every noun followed directly by a past-tense verb. If the verb is passive in meaning (the contract was signed), the sentence is fine. If the noun is doing the verb to something else (the party breached the contract), you need "that" or "who". Try inserting "that": if the sentence needs it, it will read wrong without it once you look.

4. Honorifics: register lives in a different place

Korean builds respect and formality into the grammar itself: the suffix 시 honours the subject, the ending 습니다 sets the formal register, and one choice of speech level colours the whole document. English legal register has no grammatical dial. Formality is assembled piece by piece from lexical and structural choices: no contractions, precise connectives, hedged claims, full forms of reference.

Two transfers follow. The first is hunting for the dial: reaching for antique legalisms like "hereinbefore", "the said contract" and "aforementioned" as if they were English's 습니다. They are not. Modern Australian legal writing has abandoned them, and they read as costume rather than competence. Formal and plain at the same time is the target, and the full map is on the register page: Legal English register.

The second is subtler: confusing deference with caution. Korean politeness is oriented to the person you address. English legal hedging is oriented to the strength of the claim. "It is submitted that" and "the better view is" measure how strong the argument is; they do not bow to the reader. Softening a legal conclusion out of politeness ("perhaps the court might possibly find") reads to a marker as uncertainty about the law, which is the one impression you cannot afford. If your analysis supports the conclusion, state it with one calibrated hedge and stop.

5. Konglish: the loanwords that changed meaning on the way

Korean borrowed a large English vocabulary and then quietly repurposed it, and several of the repurposed words sit exactly where legal writing needs the original. Translating the Korean sense back into English produces sentences that are fluent, confident and wrong.

The last row is the sharpest trap, because "service" in a litigation context is a term of art: "the defendant was served" has nothing to do with generosity. The fix is vocabulary work, not grammar work: treat these five as new words that happen to look familiar, and check each one when it appears in your draft.

Bonus transfer: number and agreement

Korean plural marking with 들 is optional and often omitted, and Korean verbs do not agree with their subjects. Both habits transfer quietly. English legal writing is dense with load-bearing plurals ("the parties have exchanged contracts", "damages", "proceedings", "costs") and with third-person verbs that must carry their "s" ("the court holds", "the respondent denies"). One read-through of your draft listening only for final "s" catches most of it.

A Korean-specific self-check

Run these five passes on your next assignment, in this order, about two minutes each:

1. Articles: check every instance of party names, court, contract, and the doctrine nouns. Use the 그 test for definite reference, then the full checklist on the articles page.
2. Subjects: every clause needs one. Search for sentences beginning "Is", "Are" or "Has", and for any clause where you cannot point at its subject.
3. Relative clauses: every noun followed directly by a past-tense verb gets the "that" insertion test.
4. Register: contractions gone, antique legalisms gone, and every hedge calibrated to the claim rather than to the reader.
5. The Konglish five: search your draft for claim, appeal, merit, sign and service, and confirm each carries its legal sense, not its loanword sense.

Twenty minutes, and it targets exactly the errors your first language predicts, which is a far better use of proofreading time than reading the whole draft one more time and hoping.

If you would like this kind of checking done with you rather than by you alone, Legal Writing Lab is a free feedback tool for international law students writing Australian legal English. It flags the issues in your draft, explains the rule behind each one with notes that account for your first language, and never writes your work for you.