Legal literacy Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for coming along. Today at the Academy we are holding a conference devoted to legal literacy. We’ve invited our colleagues, qualified lawyers, to take part in the conference and to deliver their talks. Today they’ll give us information about the work of a lawyer, tort law, internationalization of law, international law and uniform law. But at first let me talk a little about legal literacy itself. In many countries, citizens’ access to the legal system, and therefore assertion of their rights, is severely restricted by poverty, lack of knowledge of rights and the law, and the complexities of the system. A major barrier to the delivery of justice is that enforcers and administrators of the law are not adequately versed in the duties and obligations of their professions. Legal literacy, often defined as the acquisition of critical awareness about rights and the law, increases the citizens’ ability to assert rights and the capacity to be prepared for change. In today’s highly regulated and over litigated business world it’s impossible to conduct business and not come into contact with the law. Every day hundreds, if not thousands, of business decisions are made throughout the organizations. Some decisions are big. Some decisions are small. But regardless of size, they all impact the legal health of the organization in one way or another. Yet, many employees are often unaware of how their day-to-day decisions impact the bottom line because the legal implications are not immediately apparent. They lack legal literacy Legal literacy programs are effective means of preventing the alienation of ordinary citizens from legal institutional processes. Involvement of citizens in these institutions and processes is contributory to social and political stability. An efficient, effective and responsive legal system where citizens are able to assert their rights provides a measure of predictability in transactional dealings, which are a prerequisite for sound governance, and is particularly important for the development of every state. And now let’s get down to business, and our first speaker is….She’ll speak about lawyers at work.