About The Winning Brief
Clear, natural, client-ready English for European legal professionals.We help lawyers, law firms, and legal-adjacent professionals communicate with clarity and confidence in English, in writing, in meetings, and under pressure.
What We Do
The Winning Brief is a legal English coaching and training practice built for multilingual European professionals.
Most of our clients already have “good English.” The problem isn’t basic grammar — it’s tone, precision, speed, and credibility when the stakes are high.
We help you:
- Write clearly without sounding stiff, translated, or overly formal
- Control tone across borders (resolute, diplomatic, persuasive)
- Speak with presence in calls, meetings, and negotiations
- Reduce rewrites and second-guessing
- Show leadership-level communication that matches your legal thinking
Who We Work With
Associates, counsel, and partners looking for personal improvement.
Legal + business professionals (BD, secretaries, HR, compliance).
University and career programs (international tracks and employability pathways).
Professionals working in English who need client-ready communication.
How We Help
Depending on your needs, we offer:
- 1:1 coaching: writing + speaking, applied to real work
- self-paced resources: scripts, templates, guides, audio learning
- firm training and workshops: by department or practice group
- speaking events: conferences, universities, professional associations
Important: This is not ESL. We don’t do vocabulary lists or generic drills.
This is clarity coaching for professionals: structure, tone control, persuasion, and confident delivery.
Our Approach
We work directly with real deliverables: emails, client updates, memos, presentations, call preparation, and difficult conversations.
You leave with:
- a clearer, more persuasive version of your text or message
- reusable phrasing patterns you can apply again
- a “do this / don’t do this” checklist that fits your role and jurisdiction
Mabel Leung
Founder, Legal English CoachMabel is a legal English trainer and lawyer-linguist with more than 15 years of experience supporting legal professionals and law firms in Belgium and across Europe.
Mabel created The Winning Brief after noticing a gap: many legal English resources exist, but very few are designed for multilingual European practitioners who need English that works in real meetings, client relationships, and cross-border matters.
The name The Winning Brief is inspired by Bryan A. Garner (LawProse.org, Editor in Chief, Black’s Law Dictionary) and his work on clear legal writing — including his book The Winning Brief. The mission is aligned: clarity is credibility.
Our clients include law firms and legal teams in Belgium and across Europe, as well as public and private organizations that operate in English. Many of our firm clients are active in cross-border work and international environments.
We work across Dutch and French regularly and support communication across practice areas, including:
- Corporate & Commercial Law
- Contract Drafting & Negotiation
- Labour & Employment
- Dispute Resolution & Litigation
- Regulatory & Compliance
- Intellectual Property
- EU Law & Cross-border
- Real Estate & Construction
- Competition / Antitrust
- Banking & Finance
- Tax
- Insolvency & Restructuring
- Environmental Law
- Human Rights
- Privacy / Data Protection
(and more — the focus is always clear communication in your context.)
Your work stays yours. We can work with anonymised excerpts, and NDAs are available if needed — especially for law firm client matters.
Ready to sound as strong as you think?
Book your free 30-minute consult or explore coaching.