Consolidation of market economy, increase in international contacts, intensification of globalization processes, and the coming reform of the higher education system of the Russian Federation make heightened demands of the level of future lawyers’ training in Legal English. A successful career in legal profession of today requires not only a good command of General and Legal English and a rich legal vocabulary, but also well-developed communicative skills including the skill of reading.
        A practical command of English sufficiently good for professional use presupposes mastering techniques of different kinds of reading and extracting information to meet certain requirements of completeness and accuracy.

        The lawyer must be able to process high volumes of information, extract data pertinent to a particular task, select and analyze the data using different criteria. Taking into account the specificity of legal profession we arrive at a conclusion that the need to improve future lawyers’ skills of reading including the skill of analytical reading is evident, urgent, and timely.
        Keeping in mind future lawyers’ objectives and tasks we arrive at another conclusion about the practicability and advisability of acquiring certain background knowledge about activities, operations and dailly routines of the law firm abroad.
        The development of the above-mentioned skills and the acquisition of the necessary background knowledge can be considerably facilitated by a course of home reading on condition that it is properly organized.

        The target audience of the course are students of legal departments of universities. Yet, the seeming narrow specialization of the course is not an aim in itself. Although the course is intended for students of law, it can be recommended for a broader audience, (for example, economists, managers, etc.) which can be seen as an advantage of the course.
        Students joining the course of home reading are required to possess certain knowledge of General English (an upper-intermediate level is strongly desirable) and already have basic skills of main kinds of reading, such as, reading for the purpose of close study, reading for the purpose of first-hand view, reading for the purpose of survey and reading for the purpose of search. They must also have a desire to purposefully develop their speech skills on the basis of the material of home reading and to improve their linguistic competence by making a more productive use of reading.
        The course of home reading is developed in full compliance with the state educational standards in professional training. However, it must be flexible enough to provide the opportunity for either using it autonomously or as a complementary course in addition to the required course of Legal English. The complementarity of the course of home reading can be achieved by careful selection of the material for home reading, on the one hand, and by using certain elements of analytical reading with reference to the material of the main course, on the other hand.

        The course of home reading must be effective. The main indicators of its effectiveness include the expansion of vocabulary, both, general and legal, and the increase in fluency and the extent of understanding in different kinds of reading. For example, the expansion of Legal and General English vocabulary, on average, by 1, 000 units (including 300 units in productive use) results in the increase in fluency in both, first-hand view reading without a dictionary and close study reading with a dictionary.
        It is a matter of common knowledge, that the degree of importance of different kinds of reading depends on the level of learners. Initial stages of learning are characterized by the leading role of close study reading and first-hand view reading. At the following stages close study reading, first-hand view reading, survey reading, and search reading continue to preserve their importance. At the same time these stages are featured by the increasing role of analytical reading which needs control.
        The teacher exercises control over analytical reading by asking his or her students to analyse the reasons for some or other events, give legal qualification for certain acts of characters, uncover motives of characters’ decisions, estimate possible legal consequences of these decisions, determine the extent of liability, and give legal commentary.

        A more productive use of reading as the means to improve linguistic competence of students implies developing certain skills and abilities allowing to extract not only the content aspect of information contained in the text but also its linguistic aspect. These include the ability to identify specific means of characterization employed by the author, pragmatic means aimed at producing some special emotional effect on the reader and creating certain emotional coloring, and means of rendering nuances of irony, humor, etc.
        In the course of home reading it is necessary to attach great importance to handling abbreviations, reduced forms of words, and idioms which substantially impede the understanding of the text. Sometimes it is not the translation of an idiom itself that causes the main difficulty but the identification of an idiom in the text and its localization in the sentence. This is where the teacher must give a helping hand taking on him or herself this part of work. The teacher must be always ready to come up with his or her own variant of translation and offer detailed explanation, interpretation, and commentary on the use of idioms.
        Work on liguistic peculiarities of the text is very productive. It provides for naturally motivated learning of the laguage material and creates necessary conditions for its adequate use in students’ speech.

        The key to success of the course of home reading is the right choice of the reading material. The material for home reading must be authentic, contain samples of different styles, and be a source of legal vocabulary. At the same time it must be not only informative and instructive but also entertaining and exciting. The volume of the home reading material is limited by the time limits of the course.
        The author of the article suggests using the work of fiction as a material for home reading. It means the availability of the course for a broader audience and the opportunity of its autonomous use. Targeting the course at the students of law can be achieved by the choice of the genre, the author, and the book itself. In the opinion of the author of the article, the perfect genre for the specified target audience is a juridical thriller, and the perfect author is its father-founder John Grisham. The author of the article suggests one of the best novels by John Grisham “The Firm” as a particular book for the home reading course.
        The choice of a book is made not by chance. The main character of the book is a young lawyer. The reader is plunged into the atmosphere of a law firm specializing in tax law, securities, and real estate. The organized crime community of sophisticated hot-shot lawyers of the firm help their clients in tax evasion, money laundering, and other criminal schemes. They do not confine themselves to economic crimes. They come to more than that and do not hesitate to kill for the achievement of their criminal purposes. The above-mentioned circumstances make this book a good source of economic and legal vocabulary measured out in proper doses and coming in a meaningful and entertaining context.

        Legal concepts familiar to the reader from the required courses of ESP are brightly illustrated in the book, which facilitates their deeper understanding, effective learning, and productive use. The topic of the novel, its main character, the scene, and the plot provide a good opportunity for introducing certain elements of analytical reading into the course of home reading based on courses, such as, “Legal State Systems of the USA and Great Britain”, “Contract Law”, and, especially, “Legal Foundation of a Business”.
        For example, the first ten chapters of the book alone give the opportunity to discuss issues, such as, job bias, the form of business organization of a law firm, the attorney-client privilege, the system of lawyers’ pay, fiduciary duty of partners, the status of a lawyer, the role of preventive law, the peculiarities of offshore business, the structure of the bar exam, and many other issues.
        John Grisham’s book also serves as a source of cultural information helpful in country studies. It contains references to historical realities, for example, the period of Reconstruction. It mentions various higher educational establishments, professional licenses, certificates, diplomas, scientific degrees, legal directories, journals, magazines, taxation bodies, investigation bureaus, grand hotels, car makes and many other things. Besides, the book is a good source of background knowledge about the activities, operations, and daily routines of a law firm.

        Like many other books by John Grisham, “The Firm” is translated into Russian. The translation by Yu. Kiryak is on sale in many bookshops and, so, it is available for both, students and teachers.
        In developing the course of home reading and in preparing for the lesson teachers can, to a certain extent, rely on the translation by Yu. Kiryak as a rather professional literary translation of fiction. However, it would not be too wise of the teacher to wholly rely on this translation in terms of vocabulary units. In this respect a good word-for-word translation by an honest teacher with carefully selected regular equivalents would be of much better help than a literary translation which is less valuable in this sense.
        On the other hand, the translation by Yu. Kiryak is not perfect, for it contains losses of information, generalizations, inaccuracies, and even distortions of sense. Unfortunately, the translation of legal concepts and legal terms contained in the book is no exception. Therefore, for better understanding the original text of John Grisham’s novel the teacher should equip himself or herself with linguistic encyclopaedias in country studies of the USA, specialized English-Russian dictionaries in Economics and Law, English-Russian dictionaries of abbreviations in Economics, and American idioms dictionaries and incourage his or her students to actively use them in their studies. Internet is also worth using as well as other available sources of information.

        As a material for home reading the teacher may use either the whole book in the original or its abridged reader versions. Using readers helps to reduce the volume of the material to cover. Making a reader for students of law is an important task. Adaptation of the text is not allowed. All professional collisions, legal concepts, and terms contained in the text are immune and should be retained. So, the maker of a reader for lawyers must be certain to keep them utterly intact.
        The home reading course syllabus has a linear structure and may consist of one or more consecutive modules. The material is covered by the chapter. Certain kinds of assignments within the chapter are arranged by the page for students’ convenience. The assignments to each chapter and the assignments to each page are uniform. This uniformity of the course arrangement provides for by-the-lesson continuity of the course and a high degree of students’ involvement in the process of studies.
        Covering all the chapters of the book till the very end at any expense is not the best possible aim. In the opinion of the author of the article, preference should be given to the quality of comprehension which results in efficient learning. However, it is desirable that the teacher should not breach the order of chapters and try to cover them in their natural succession. The rest of the book which remained uncovered by the course can be very well covered by a collective view of the screen version of the novel in the English language with a discussion to follow. As one of the variants of ending the course the author of the article can recommend writing an essay on one of the topics proposed by the teacher.

        The course of home reading also helps to develop the skills of speaking, listening, and writing. By giving detailed answers to the teacher’s questions, commenting on the problems, and participating in discussions students improve their communicative competence based on the material of home reading. Preparation for and participation in the lessons also implies taking notes, making up plans, writing summaries, and other forms of writing.
        The course of home reading proposed by the author of the article is intended to develop and improve all the above-mentioned skills and abilities on the basis of the language material of John Grisham’s book “The Firm”. The course is designed for 40 hours of classroom work. It also can be used for students’ independent work. To give the reader a better idea of the structure of the proposed course and its content the author of the article offers more detailed information about the course and the assignments for the first chapter.

        The list of essay topics

1) Compare the film and the book
2) Senior partners of Bendini
3) Victims of Bendini
4) Partner-Associate relationship in Bendini
5) Criminal activities of Bendini
6) Mitch’s legal career
7) Mitch’s dilemma and choice
8) Sacred Rules of Bendini
9) Mitch’s accomplices
10) FBI agents and their methods of work
11) Mitch’s family relations
12) Clients of Bendini
13) History of Bendini
14) Workaholics of Bendini

        II. Who are the characters? What is the status of each?

        III. Briefly summarize the content of the chapter in one or two sentences.

        IV. What do the following abbreviations stand for?

1) CPA
2) CIA

        V. What do the following reduced forms stand for?

1) grad (p.1)