Investigating the implementation of artificial intelligence in learning legal english of english majored students at ho chi minh city university of law

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF LAW

GRADUATION THESIS
B.A. DEGREE IN ENGLISH
Major: Legal English

INVESTIGATING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE IN LEARNING LEGAL ENGLISH OF ENGLISH
MAJORED STUDENTS AT HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF LAW

Supervisor: Luong Minh Hieu
Student: Dao Phu Quang
Student ID: 1952202010053
Class: LE44B

Ho Chi Minh City, 21st June, 2023


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HO CHI MING UNIVERSITY OF LAW
FACULTY OF LEGAL LANGUAGES

INVESTIGATING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE IN LEARNING LEGAL ENGLISH OF ENGLISH
MAJORED STUDENTS AT HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF LAW

Submitted by:
Dao Phu Quang

Supervised by:

Luong Minh Hieu

Ho Chi Minh City, 21st June, 2023


Table of Contents

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS............................................................................................1
ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................2
I.

INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................3

II.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE .............................................................................11

III.

METHODOLOGY ...............................................................................................25

IV.

DISCUSSION .......................................................................................................35

V.

CONCLUSION .....................................................................................................37

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ...............................................................................................39

REFERENCE ...................................................................................................................40
APPENDIX .......................................................................................................................43


1
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
AI
AGI
ANI
ASI
AWE
ESP
HSK
ICT
IELTS
iSTART
ITS
NLP
TELL
TOEFL
TOEIC

Artificial Intelligence
Artificial General Intelligence
Artificial Narrow Intelligence
Artificial Super Intelligence
Automated Writing Evaluation
English for Specific Purposes
Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi
Information and Communications

Technology
International English Language Testing
System
Interactive Strategy Training for Active
Reading and Thinking
Intelligent Tutoring System
Natural Language Processing
Technology-Enhanced Language Learning
Test of English as a Foreign Language
Test of English for International
Communication


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ABSTRACT
AI has been considered a surging phenomenon for the world as it revolutionises a vast range
of fields, helping people get their jobs done faster, more effectively. For Language Learning
specifically, AI’s techniques such as machine learning, deep learning, Natural Language
Processing, etc., greatly take part in making AI applications for English Language learning.
Legal English Learning is not an exception as it can also benefit from AI applications. This
survey is conducted to investigate the current presence of AI technology in the Legal English
Department of Ho Chi Minh City University of law. Moreover, this study sheds light on the
students’ perception, attitude of AI technology towards learning Legal English, the students’
implementation of AI into their studies and. Results showed that the majority of the students
being surveyed use AI applications to serve their study purposes, and claimed that AI proved
useful in their study and willing to implement it for the future Legal English studies. This
implies that Legal English majors showed positive perceptions and attitudes and acceptance
towards AI applications. However, the presence of AI Legal-English-based applications
remained limited or unknown to the students. Therefore, this paper can be used as the base for
future study approaches focusing on more specific AI applications for the Legal English

Department. Moreover, further observations and investigations should be conducted about the
specific tendencies or challenges of students when learning Legal English so as to strengthen
the means and usage of AI.


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I.

INTRODUCTION
1. Statement of the problem

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become one of the most influential inventions of the
human kind. Thanks to the implementation of machine learning, it can mimic human’s
intelligence to a certain level. In some cases, it can out-perform human’s ability to do tasks
(Scharre et al., 2018). With appropriate exploitations, AI is a great tool to help humans solve
workloads faster.
AI has been implemented in a multitude of fields. AI is capable of reading scans and
increasing the precision in health diagnosis. AI can also be taken into advantage in Agriculture
by checking, analysing data to assist in improving crop yields. AI plays an important role in
helping reduce energy consumption in highly energy-demanded factories, farms and businesses
(Franke, 2019). In E-commerce, customer’s tendency, interest and patterns can be analysed and
studied by AI. After a few purchases, it can use the information to further recommend
customers about the categories of products that they are also interested in, or predict the
upcoming products that customers might be buying. The application of AI can be seen in spamfiltering systems used by Gmail to sort out spam emails and directly send them to the spam
folder. According to Kumaran (2022), this technology has been proven to reach the filtration
accuracy of an estimated 99.9%. Social platforms such as Instagram and Facebook
implemented the mechanics similar to Gmail’s spam filtering. AI is Instagram’s fundamental
basis for the content reviewing process. Through machine learning, AI is able to detect and
automatically remove contents that go against the community guidelines even before anyone
could see and report it. In some cases, the addition of AI can support machines and programs

to do complex tasks. For instance, Artificial Intelligence is being implemented in Facial
recognition systems - a technology capable of matching a human face to a database of faces to
serve the purpose of authentication. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence’s deep learning


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mechanics, it can learn to detect human faces regardless of the changes occurring such as the
presence of bruises, acnes or facial hair such as a moustache or beard grown by the individuals
(Lehr & Crumpler, 2021). Language Education is also an aspect that AI can shine. Technologyenhanced language learning (TELL) researchers have been applying a multitude of technology
relating to language education for decades (Zou et al., 2018). In a previous study, Heil (2016)
has pointed out that de-contextualization and authentic speech production insufficiency are the
problems many applications that serve to support language learning are currently facing.
However, Chen et al. (2019) have created a context-aware ubiquitous program - a system that
integrates wireless, mobile and highly context-awareness technology to quickly grasp the
current situation the learner is in in the real world and devise solutions, support in accordance
(Hwang et al. ,2009) but for language learning. There, AI is being implemented as an enhanced
tool, providing contextualisation for the learners depending on the scenarios they are facing.
As a result, students are more inspired to learn languages and achieve great performances.
Additionally, with the recent introduction of AI-fuelled chat-bots such as ChatGPT - an
Artificial intelligence chat-bot being trained to follow enquiries and provide detailed responses.
One of its most impressive aspects is the capability to provide the most appropriate, accurate
and up-to-date responses and even to the most complex and controversial topics in an instance.
Furthermore, it can write poems, generate codes, design presentations or perform other
academic tasks such as write a contract, a cover letter, design CVs, and fact check. Thus, AI
technology can be considered as a big potential to exploit in language studying (Huang et al.
,2023).
Despite its popularity in the Western societies. AI technologies in general remain a
relatively new topic for the world. According to the Oxford Insights’s Government AI
readiness Index 2021 report, 44 out of 160 countries in the world were reported to have their
own AI strategic plans and show willingness to join the global AI race. Vietnam is also quite

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new with the technology, spending less than a dollar per capita on AI. For a brief comparison,
in the same period, Singapore, a country in the Southeast Asia region spent roughly 68 dollars
per capita for AI (Vincenzo Caporale, 2021). Being ranked 62th place in the government AI
readiness Index in 2021, and as a developing country, Vietnam’s AI research capacity stands
at 26th in the world. It is estimated that by 2030, AI will account for 13 trillion USD to
Vietnam’s economy, equivalent to 1.2% of the nation’s GDP. Currently in Vietnam, AI is being
applied in smart urban areas, in healthcare insurance, smart agriculture and environmental
technology (Samaya Dharmar, 2023). However, there is currently very little to no mentions
about how Artificial Intelligence can be used in Vietnamese Education. There are attempts to
bring AI to the classroom, but at the moment of this thesis, the vast majority of schools typically
follow the traditional methods of learning and teaching students. Moreover, students are not
officially introduced to AI technology, as well as teachers are not yet capable of implementing
AI to their curriculum or lesson plan. There is uncertainty on the reasons, but the first one could
be the lack of equipment or programs to encourage, support or instruct teachers to bring
Artificial Intelligence into their teaching work. The second reason could be the lack of exposure
to the technology themselves. Vietnam had been using applications of AI in a few fields, still
AI applications are fairly limited and has not been exploited especially in Education as whole
and in Language Education in particular. Despite the advantages, there are only a few ways for
them to approach AI in Vietnam. One of the prominent leading inventions – ChatGPT is
currently not available in certain countries including Vietnam. The only few ways for the
teenagers and young adults to use a product or an application that is AI-based is Google
assistant of Google and Siri of Apple. Both are virtual assistants for Android and IOS devices
respectively.
While it is possible to bring AI to the class or utilise AI to study or improve language
skills, especially with writing skill, there are controversial opinions, stating that AI dependence

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could lead to detrimental effects, especially with the learner’s language ability. Therefore, this
thesis is conducted to focus on the topic of AI in Language Studying aspects of the Legal
English Department.
2. Rationale of the study
Previous studies have conducted research about the tendency of applying AI
technologies in Language Education such as Pikhart (2020). There are few studies specifically
focusing on the analysing trends and impact of AI technology on Language learning such as
Huang et al. (2023). Some studies focused on analysing the perceptions and attitudes of
students towards using AI applications on improving English skills such as Suryana et al.
(2020). However, there are currently no studies conducted about AI’s implementations, its
impact on students in Legal English Learning.
For students in the Legal English Department of Ho Chi Minh City University of Law,
the majority of the subjects are language-focus. Advanced Grammar and Language Skills are
subjects relating to English usage in general. Advanced writing for instance, in order to pass,
students are required to perform precise and coherent writing capability by doing academic
writing tasks similar to IELTS writing task 1 and 2. There are 4 main subjects namely, Legal
Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking being studied throughout the span of 3 semesters
which is heavily legal language-based. Generally, the learners are trained to use English but in
a legal context. Legal terminology, Legal consulting and contract review, Legal translation and
interpretation and Legal Drafting are also related to Law but remain focused on language
aspects. These subjects can be assisted by AI programs. However, little to no usage for AI is
being implemented. Students are still required to use English in these subjects to manually draft
documents, translate and interpret Legal tasks. In addition, despite the existence of many
studies about AI usage for Language teaching purposes. However, studies about how AI can
be used to help learning Legal English is not being thoroughly examined.


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3. Aim of the study

This paper was carried out with a view to investigate the current usage of AI
technologies such as software, and systems in the Legal English Department.
This study is dedicated to observing the attitude and perception of English-major students
towards Artificial Intelligence.
The study then specifically focuses on analysing the impact of AI in Legal English
Department, specifically the positives and the negatives influence and give conclusions on
whether AI should be implemented into Legal teaching and learning.
In order to achieve the aim of this study, the research was designed to seek the answers to the
following questions:
● How common is AI for students of the Legal English Department?
● What are the perceptions and attitudes that students have about AI?
● What are the benefits and challenges in the application of Artificial Intelligence in legal
English learning?
4. Description of Subjects
For students, specifically students who are studying in Universities, they are the
potential users of this invention. Olson et al. (2011) have conducted research focusing on

the frequency of technology usage and have concluded that Young adults outperformed
older adults in terms of using multiple fields of technology. According to ‘ICT Fact and
Figures 2017’ published by the United Nations, the Youth (ages 15–24) uses
technologies the most. 71% of the young people around the world are online. In
developed countries, young people account for 94% of Internet users. They are exposed
to technology at an early age, their capability to use electronic devices and technologies are
high, and are willing to exploit different ways to help them do things in a shorter amount of
time and with high precision. It is plausible to conclude they are the group that are the most


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receptive targets for the usage of other technologies such as AI. Hence, the study will circulate
around the students of the Legal Faculty of Ho Chi Minh City University of law. Specifically,

the junior, sophomore and senior students. Each of the classes has an average number of 50
students, and the age of the students ranges from 18 to 22 years old. Additionally, the
participants must also be students who are currently studying in the Legal English faculty.
Young adults are proven to have a wider range of approaches in technology while the
sophomores, juniors and seniors in the University of Law are mostly in the age from 18 to 25
years old, which coincides with the age of young adults. Therefore, all of the said students
group will be subject to this research.
5. Significance of the study
AI has brought significant changes to the world thanks to its capability to perform a
certain task equal to human’s, or in some cases, exceeds human capacity. The technology has
been applied to a multitude of fields, from tasks that require complex techniques to jobs that
require reasoning such as lawyers. However, the study on how it impacts the language learning
process remains vague, especially with Legal English. So far, no studies are conducted on how
AI impacts the way students study Legal English. No studies have been conducted to
investigate the current situation of how students perceive AI technology as a whole in the Legal
English Department. Thus, the findings of the thesis will help readers visualise the current
situation of students of the Legal English faculty about the AI technology, whether they know
about the existence of the technology, their preference on the usage of it or know how to utilise
it.
The study serves as a message to other departments, faculties and schools that
introduction to AI should be considered and be utilised in Education, in how students learn
their major, work with their jobs. Currently the movement for implementing AI as a tool for
daily work and studies in Vietnam remains a topic that is relatively new and needs to gather a


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sizable amount of discussion. Throughout the thesis, students and teachers can have a greater
awareness about how AI can be used as a tool to learn and teach respectively. AI is not as
technologically complex and fictional as people’s frequent misconception that it is required to
be used by a specific area of jobs or studies but rather it appeared ubiquitously, as a tool to

assist people in their normal work and routines. Moreover, the thesis also gathers experiences
and opinions of the participants about AI which helps teachers to identify the current problems
students have with the technology, and their willingness towards using the technology, and the
possible benefits it brings to the Legal English Department in particular and other departments
or majors in general.
Lastly, the findings of study will be the base for teachers of faculties, especially the
ones relating to Languages and Legal Languages that share common features with the Legal
English Department to innovate their methods of teaching and learning in their faculty.
Combining all of the aforementioned purposes, teachers will be able to analyse and find
suitable methods to bring AI into classes and devise possible implementations of the
technology to vastly help with the studying progress in the faculty, especially with the removal
of conventional or outdated methods of learning and teaching, and replacing it with more
suitable and friendly approaches using AI.
6. Methodology
The study will employ a mixed-method research design, combining both qualitative and
quantitative methods for two reasons.
Firstly, the author chose the quantitative methods due to the research aims to analyse
the tendency and perceptions of English majors towards AI, and how frequent or familiar they
are with the usage of AI and the willingness to apply AI to their studies and future jobs. Data
such as percentages and numbers of participants will be analysed in order to draw the overall
picture about the common trends in the Legal Faculty.


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Secondly, the qualitative methods rely on deep analysis by using observations and
documents about the related topic. Multiple authors have done research on the following topics.
Therefore, the author wishes to use the given materials as the base to strengthen the claims or
the possible findings, results and conclusion
Questionnaires will be given to the vast majority of English majors in the Legal English
Department. The questions listed in the questionnaire will gather information such as their

perceptions about AI, their usage of AI and general questions regarding their willingness to
implement AI to their current studies or jobs. The tools that the survey will be conducted will
be Google Form, which helps facilitate the survey distribution to reach a wider range of
students.
7. Organization of the study
I.
II.

Introduction
Literature of Review

III.

Methodology

IV.

Discussion

V.

Conclusion

II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
1.

Notion of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

In order to understand the concept of Artificial Intelligence. It is compulsory to break
down the concept itself and define each of the words individually.

The definition of “intelligence” remains extremely difficult and controversial to define using
one single sentence or expression (S. Legg & M. Hutter, 2007). The concept of intelligence
appeared in people’s mind from ancient times. Specifically, in Ancient Greek, despite having
no unifying description for the concept itself, philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato had their
own ways of expressing the term.


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Plato (as cited in ‘Towards an interdisciplinary framework about intelligence’, PalancaCastan, N., Sánchez Tajadura, B., & Cofré, R. ,2021) associated the concept of reasoning as
the core of Intelligence. Therefore, he devised 2 types of reasoning: discursive and intuitive
reasoning. For discursive reasoning, one must start from the premises, then follow the steps
clearly and precisely in order to draw a conclusion, in other words, a slow way of reasoning.
Intuitive reasoning on the other hand can jump from the premise to the conclusion without
going through the entire process of deductive reasoning, in other words, a simplified way of
reasoning. Hence, Plato considered Intuitive reasoning as the highest form of human
intelligence.
For Aristotle (as cited in ‘Towards an interdisciplinary framework about intelligence’,
Palanca-Castan, N., Sánchez Tajadura, B., & Cofré, R. ,2021), He used the term “soul” and
divided the term into 3 main categories: vegetative, sensitive and intellectual soul, which is in
increasing order. Vegetative souls were for growth and nutrition. Sensitive souls consist of the
features of the previous category with the addition of locomotive ability and sense perception.
Intellectual soul is the previous category with the addition of reasoning capacity. Hence, the
intellectual soul is the highest of the 3 forms and specifically for human beings.
Through Plato’s and Aristotle’s definition, the notion of intelligence that humans
possess is largely associated with the ability to reason. It is also true because humans are one
of the species that has been surviving and producing offspring effectively despite drastic
changes in the environment. Herbert Spencer had used the term “survival of the fittest” when
he read Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species in his Principles of Biology (1864). The term
means that the species that could survive in and throughout different climates and environments
and could produce offspring are the species worthy of living. Humans along with millions of

species ever since the beginning of time. Despite drastic changes of the environment, climate
and the process of natural selection, Humans survive and thrive constantly throughout history


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all thanks to Intelligence, in other words, the ability to reason, finding the best way of survival
and method of adaptation to the surrounding environment. The claim is largely supported by
philosophers in the modern age. S. Legg & M. Hutter (2007) has written an article,
summarising every definition of Intelligence written by researchers, psychologists and even
general definitions that they could find. The group authors observed that although there exist
different notions of intelligence, they all have a few features in common. Mainly the attribute
of the individual is when interacting with its surroundings, the agent’s ability to execute tasks
and achieve targets successfully or with profit, and the agent’s capability to adapt to a multitude
of objectives, challenges and environments. From the said features, they have drawn their own
definitions as follows: “Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide
range of environments.” -S. Legg and M. Hutter
Moving on to the notion of Artificiality, it implies products that are being made by
humans rather than being produced in nature. However, the definition does not end here. There
is a misconception between artificial products and synthetic ones. Herbert A. Spencer (in 1998)
has pointed out that the difference between them is the property that they display. Artificiality
focuses on mimicking the natural products while synthesis is to create an exact replica of the
natural products. For instance, The US Food and Drug Administration has listed out 6 highly
intensive chemicals for Artificial sweeteners. Aspartame is one of the common sweetening
agents and has been used in diet cokes or zero sugar sodas. Although they are sweet, they are
used as a substitution for sugar. However, if synthetic sweetener were to be created, it must
reflect the exact chemical properties of natural sugar, in other words, the man-made product is
indistinguishable from the natural ones. This is where the boundaries between artificiality and
synthesis become different.
Combined with the two definitions, Artificial intelligence is man-made products,
specifically machines or programs that mimics human intelligence and reasoning in order to

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achieve targets, goals and adapt to a multitude of environments. De Spiegeleire et al. (2017)
has listed out 3 categories of Artificial Intelligence in the research community: Artificial
Narrow Intelligence (ANI) or Narrow AI are machines that are in some specific tasks, equals
or exceeds human intelligence or performs beyond human capability. Artificial General
Intelligence (AGI) are machines that are capable of reaching the range of human intelligence
and performance in any task. Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) is machine intelligence that
surpasses human intelligence and performance across any tasks given.
However, in the following study, the author wishes to focus specifically on Artificial
Narrow Intelligence or Narrow AI for a few reasons. Firstly, apart from Narrow AI, AGI and
ASI are expected to perform tasks as equal or surpass human performance in every task,
however, none of the AI technologies can reach that level of coverage yet and still heavily need
the help and guidance of humans, in other words, the current AI technology is considered as
Narrow AI (Scharre et al., 2018). In fact, some of them may cause detrimental effects if being
implemented to usage. Patil and Davies, P. (2014) have conducted a survey on the usage of
Google Translate on medical communication. The survey is conducted by taking common
medical statements and translated into 26 different languages from different continents using
Google translate. Despite achieving 57.7% accuracy, the group authors highly recommend not
to use it for medical consents or research from patients unless it is unable to find a human
translator or the situation becomes too urgent to provide one. Moreover, Narrow AI possesses
no consciousness, Therefore, they are yet to perform human tasks with problems requiring
critical, abstract thinking.
Currently, based on the notion of Narrow AI, multiple applications have been
developed. Software e.g. Google translate, Duolingo, Grammarly and even the Google Search
Engine. Further development of chat-bots such as ChatGPT, Google Assistant, Siri are purely


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focusing on AI’s deep learning and machine learning techniques to help humans do tasks or
solve problems.
Overall, the potential applications for this technology are massive and cannot be listed
out entirely in the thesis. However, the author wants to focus on some of the AI software and
systems that could possibly benefit English Language in general and Legal English in
particular.
2.

The implementation of Artificial Intelligence in Legal English

Legal English is a specialised language that is being used by people of the Legal
professions e.g., solicitors, barristers, judges and attorneys, etc., to perform legal works such
as drafting legal documents, consulting, etc. The practice of using Legal English is relatively
common in English-speaking countries, especially the USA and countries of the
Commonwealth (Veretina-Chiriac, 2012). The subject has become popular in multiple
countries as English is being widespread. However, questions may arise on whether if Legal
English and plain, normal English are relevant. In actuality, Legal English is rather a
subcategory of English (Tiersma, 1996). Legal English is a type of English for Specific
Purposes (ESP). Each type of ESP possesses different terminology and syntax (Saliu, 2013).
However, Legal English differs from plain English due to its abnormal terminology, linguistics
and punctuation features (Nhac, 2021). For vocabularies, Legal English utilises numerous
technical terms and jargon that are specific to the Legal profession. Some of the features
include: archaic words e.g., heretofore (up to this time), thereupon (on that matter, therefore,
immediately after that), and whereabouts (the general location of a person or thing) (VeretinaChiriac, 2012), technical terms e.g., patent, share, royalty, sound familiar to laypersons while
some only being known by people of the Legal profession e.g., bailment, abatement (Hiltunen,
1999), foreign words/borrowed words such as stare decisis, de facto, de jure are Latin
originated, appeal, default, pur autre vie are French based or borrowed (Veretina-Chiriac,


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2012), synonymy such as assign - transfer, accord - satisfaction, acknowledge - confess which
adds in more challenges for Legal Drafting and Legal Writing Haigh (2004).
Legal English has different syntax compared to plain English. In terms of Sentence
structure, Legal English often uses lengthy, complex sentences with multiple clauses. Other
features of Legal English such as the nominalisation - the practice of replacing nouns derived
from verbs from verbs, e.g., to make a statement instead of to state (Nhac, 2021). Impersonal
style, the practice of using passive voice and third person nouns (everybody, nobody, every
person), is common in Legal English (Veretina-Chiriac, 2012). This type of style is the reason
why Legal English is considered a neutral language, however, it also interferes with language
comprehension of laypersons or people who are learning Legal English (Veretina-Chiriac,
2012).
The below table gives comparison between Plain English and Legal English through
examples.
Plain English

Legal English

The person who is suing wants money
because the other person didn't do what they
promised.

The plaintiff seeks damages for breach of
contract, specifically for the defendant's
failure to perform under the terms of the
agreement

If the buyer doesn't pay on time, the seller
can cancel the agreement and ask for
money.

Notwithstanding any other provision of this
agreement, in the event that the buyer fails
to make payment within 30 days of the due
date, the seller may terminate this agreement
and seek damages for breach.

I understand and agree that I have to follow
the rules in this agreement, and so do my
family and anyone who takes over for me.

The undersigned hereby acknowledges and
agrees that the terms and conditions of this
agreement shall be binding upon them and
their respective heirs, executors,
administrators, successors, and assigns.

This law says what embezzlement is and
what happens if you're found guilty.

This statute defines the elements of the
crime of embezzlement and establishes the
penalties for conviction.


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Through the examples, it is clear that Legal English and plain English are two different
styles of writing, with distinct characteristics and purposes. In terms of vocabulary, Legal
English uses a lot of technical terms and jargon that are specific to the legal profession, while
plain English uses simple, everyday language that is easy to understand. In terms of syntax,
Legal English often uses long complex sentences with multiple clauses, while plain English,

on the other hand, uses shorter, simpler sentences that are easier to read and understand. In
terms of Tone, Legal English tends to be formal and impersonal, while plain English is more
conversational and direct. In terms of purpose, Legal English is used primarily in legal
documents, such as contracts, court filings, and statutes, where precision and accuracy are
essential while plain English, on contrary, is used in a wide range of contexts, from government
forms and consumer contracts to news articles and instructional materials.
Overall, the main difference between legal English and plain English is that legal
English is designed to be precise, unambiguous and confusing to laypersons, while plain
English is designed to be clear and easy to understand for a general audience.
Nonetheless, it is important to conclude that, despite the differences between general English
and Plain English, Legal English is still considered a language. It has usage of vocabularies,
syntax, and grammar structures, it is used by legal professionals, practitioners to serve multiple
tasks in Legal Fields, meaning it has purpose of usage, just like how Plain Languages is used
to convey meaning, in addition, due to Legal English’s nature of complexity and requirement
of precision, concision and accuracy, it is a potential aspect that AI’s applications could shine.
Legal English is a faculty in the English Department of Ho Chi Minh City University
of Law. Not only the aim of the faculty is to train students about the usage of English in law
fields, but also to deal with practical legal works. Some of the subjects in Legal English Faculty
include:


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● Subjects that focuses on the usage of General English: Advanced grammar, Language
Skill which consists of 4 courses, Academic Writing, Introduction to Linguistics,
Phonetics and phonology, British-American Culture, British Literature
● Subjects that focus on the Usage of English to the Legal fields: Legal listening, legal
reading, legal writing and legal speaking, all four of them required to have 4 individual
courses throughout semesters, Legal terminology, legal consulting and contract review,
legal translation and interpretation 1 and 2, legal drafting 1 and 2, Legal Reasoning and
Legal Methodology, study of logic.

● Law subjects: Public international law, constitutional law, World Trade Organization
Law, Criminal Law, Civil Law, administrative law
The subjects given are for training students to have a legal mind-set and the skills
required to perform legal tasks. There are multiple other subjects that have not been listed out
for a number of reasons. Firstly, some subjects are deemed as compulsory and are required to
be studied by students of every faculty in the university. Secondly, some subjects are irrelevant
to academic purposes e.g., physical education. Therefore, the author will skip the said subjects
and only focus on the ones relating to Legal English for the sake of this research.
The faculty currently follows the traditional method of learning and teaching.
Specifically, teachers use software to create presentation slides and attach the teaching content,
then the presentation file is presented in front of the class by teachers. During class,
assignments and homework are being delivered by using traditional methods. For students,
they are not being exposed to AI technologies yet, teachers are yet able to convey or instruct
students to use it. Students can potentially benefit from AI, given the advantages that it brings
for the people in law fields. Nevertheless, very few studies discuss the advantages that AI
brings for students when they study Legal English, whether it is about the Law factor or the
Language factor.


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3. Possible applications of AI in Legal English Learning
3.1. AI applications in learning Legal Writing
It is possible to use AI for helping some aspects of learning normal Writing skills. Legal
English is not an exception. AI can totally be utilised to help with Legal Writing skills. Despite
being different from plain English, the method of using AI remains the same. Thanks to AI’s
Natural Language Processing - a special machine learning technique that enables machines to
interpret, comprehend human languages, AI systems can detect errors, provide comments and
evaluations to the students in order for them to have a proper understanding about the language
they are using and practising (Huang et al. ,2023). Currently, there are a few notable mentions
for this category. Firstly, ChatGPT is one of the most widely known AI applications to help

with English skills. For writing specifically, the chat-bot can help with spelling and grammar
correction. Unfortunately, little studies are being conducted on ChatGPT at the time of the
thesis, therefore there is little to no scientific evidence for the effectiveness of ChatGPT in
learning English Language. Lee et al. (2015) has designed Genie Tutor to improve English
writing by spotting grammatical and lexical errors and suggest comments, possible solutions
and appropriate answers in real-time, the same way as ChatGPT is performing. More
importantly, subjects such as Legal Drafting require students to provide Legal basis by citing
articles in Codes. Lin et al. (2017) has developed an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) to make
academic journal writing easier. The system was extremely effective as it can give learners a
multitude of phrase and paragraph templates that depend on the context, scenario or the user’s
needs. In addition, it can support users by citing references and searching for templates. If
developed for specific legal usage, ITS can greatly benefit legal students by providing Legal
basis for drafting contracts.
3.2. AI applications in Learning Legal Reading


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Legal Reading can also be beneficial by ITS. The technology is used to improve
learners’ reading skill in general and may potentially be used to support Legal comprehension
in particular. Wijekumar et al. (2017) developed ITS for Structure Strategy teaching to improve
reading comprehension of users. The product was proven to help students detect English
language structures and gives feedback and hints in exercises. A positive result from the
experiment conducted by the author is that the proportion of participants using the ITS has
better performance than the group being given control practices. Johnson et al. (2017) put
iSTART - an ITS product of their own, into experiment. iSTART is a program that provides
videos for instruction and exercises for literacy adults to strengthen reading comprehension
skills. The author concluded from the observation that users have a positive approach and
attitudes towards the software. Legal Reading can follow the same path as plain language
reading comprehension.
3.3. AI applications in learning vocabulary and grammar

Vocabulary and grammar learning is a great aspect for AI exploitation. Chen and Li
(2010) devised a vocabulary learning system that is aware of the surrounding context of the
user. The program is able to provide learners with new words based on how free they are. If
the system detects that the learner is not occupied, it can recommend new words for them to
learn. As a result, students who are exposed to the program did a better job than those at control
conditions thanks to the context awareness mechanic. For learning grammar, Pandarova et al.
(2019) developed an English tenses practice ITS. The program makes use of a versatile
difficulty adaption to fine-tune the level of difficulty in grammar exercises. Participants show
positive improvements thanks to the system carefully and precisely adjusting the proper
exercise for them to practise based on their abilities. Another example that combines both of
the factors is Duolingo - an application that enhances users’ vocabularies and grammar usage
and many other language skills. It can provide learners with exercises judging on the input


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answers being provided by the learners. Therefore, it allows users to know where their
Language capabilities are currently at, and learn languages in general, and English in particular
at their own pace. Currently, there are no applications or systems that help students study
specialised Legal Terminology, but it is plausible to develop one in the future.
3.4. AI applications in learning Legal Speaking and listening
The presence of AI in helping with Speaking and listening is an interesting topic. At
the moment of this study, multiple AI software have been developed to help users improve
these skills. A conversational instrument was developed by Ayedoun et al. (2019) to encourage
users to communicate. Learners could interact with the AI instrument to improve their
communication skills by asking questions and then the instrument provides appropriate
answers. There are some cases where some AI applications that help improve speaking skills
were not meant to help users improve English speaking skills in the first place. In other words,
AI applications that support learners improve speaking skills can come from any form. In a
study conducted by Johnson (2007), learners practise speaking skills by playing voice
interactive games. In the study, the Mission and the Arcade are the two games being utilised

by participants to enhance speaking skills. Arcade Game requires players to give commands
by speaking into the microphone of their device to move their characters. For the Mission game,
the players role-play as the in-game character by speaking in order to complete the missions.
All of this was possible thanks to Automatic Speech Recognition technology - the technology
that enables machines to comprehend human speech by automatically transforming it into text
or any written format. What is interesting is that the software that provides students with
listening skill improvement opportunities is extremely unexpected. Suryana et al. (2020)
conducted a study on the usage of AI or AI-infused applications to improve Listening skills.
The majority of the participants chose Netflix as the most effective and efficient AI application
for learning and improving Listening skill over Joox Music, which is the product that the


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authors predicted that the majority of the participants would prefer. The reasons are because
Netflix allows them to watch movies, subtitles are optional, but the fact that they can watch
movies without one helps them to improve their English listening skills. In addition, the vast
sources of genre that Netflix offers, and the AI technology being implemented into the
algorithm can recommend appropriate movies or series based on the previous options users
have watched. This allows users to watch movies or learn from types of movies that suit their
interests or profession.
4
4.1.

Advantages of using AI in Legal learning
More personal learning experiences

AI systems being implemented to learning applications can base on the data input,
which are their answers for the exercises in this case, to analyse the current level of the user,
therefore suggesting appropriate content for learners according to their knowledge and abilities.
As previously mentioned, Pandarova et al. (2019) and Chen et al. (2006) developed systems

capable of flexibly adjusting the difficulty of exercises and contents in accordance with the
student’s result of previous exercises. For Legal English, software can be developed in the
same way to help improve Legal English skills. In this case, AI acts as a scale to evaluate
student’s abilities, therefore deciding on what exercise and assignment best suit the students’
level. Thus, students can build their knowledge in a steadier and reliable way rather than the
traditional method of self-evaluation or through teachers’. Moreover, AI might outperform
teachers as they are not as flexible as AI systems in terms of ability evaluation, and students
may feel more confident working with AI as they may feel scared of teachers criticising them
for their performance.
4.2. Immediate adjustment capability
Automated feedback provided by AI has enabled language learners to adjust their
learning thanks to the fact that AWE systems use NLP techniques to detect errors and provide


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learners with rich feedback, allowing them to take immediate action. For instance, the Bengali
Handwriting Education System used in Khatun and Miwa (2016) identified stroke production
and sequence errors, and students received timely feedback, making immediate adjustments.
This approach enhances students' language proficiency by repeatedly making modifications
and improving their work. AWE systems can provide rich formative feedback, which can
overcome teachers' preference for summative feedback due to time constraints with large-sized
classes. Gierl et al. (2014) showed that students can receive AI-based rich and individualised
feedback, enabling them to adjust their learning behaviour during their learning process instead
of at the final stage.
4.3. AI’s vast opportunities for Language Learning
AI techniques can help overcome the limited opportunities to practise a target language,
Legal English in this case. Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) enable students to learn
regardless of time and location. Stockwell (2007) developed a mobile-based ITS that could
identify difficult words and present them more frequently to increase learning opportunities.
This is incredibly crucial for the Legal English Department as not all the time there are

opportunities for students to practise using Legal English. By applying ITS to Legal English
Learning, more chances are given to improve their skills or put their Legal English skills to the
test. Additionally, learners could interact with a digital human to practise the target language.
Mirzaei et al. (2018) introduced Virtual Reality Conversation Envisioning, a technology which
allowed learners to interact with an AI agent in an immersive context. Simulated scenarios,
such as bargaining and interviewing, could be created, providing students with more
opportunities to practise their speaking skills in different contexts. This approach also allowed
for more frequent use of the language without the need to travel abroad or have no opportunities
to interact by using Legal English.
5. Possible challenges using AI in Legal English learning