For any lawyer working with international matters, English is an essential tool. It is the common language of the legal profession, of business and of international affairs.

Employers need to know that the legal staff they appoint have an appropriate level of English to be able to communicate with clients and professionals in other countries, and to be able to deal effectively with material written in English. Those who have recently qualified as lawyers, or who are still studying, need to be able to show employers that they have these skills.

IPT offers a range of courses in Legal English that are ideal for those who need to work in the international legal community: 

1. Legal English

This course lasts 198 academic hours and is suitable for students at Upper Intermediate to Advanced level.

The aims of the course are to:

• Improve students’ abilities in the key skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking within the context of a range of legal text types and topics.

• Enable students to engage more effectively in a range of typical situations found in legal practice and develop the skills and confidence needed to work efficiently in English.

• To prepare students for success in the Cambridge ESOL International Legal English Certificate (ILEC).

Since the vast majority of practising lawyers deal with commercial law, the course focuses on the use of English for this purpose, dealing specifically with:

Company law Contract law Employment law

Real property law Intellectual property Negotiable instruments

Secured transactions Debtor-creditor Competition law

While a selection of legal terminology is presented within each area, mastering legal English requires more than simply improving knowledge of specialised vocabulary. For this reason, each topic area also includes a focus on larger chunks of language, common phrases and word combinations which are necessary for successful communication.

In addition the course includes a number of legal case studies, based on actual cases, featuring text material of the kind lawyers need to consult when preparing a case. These provide an opportunity to apply the language skills developed to authentic communicative tasks.

2. Legal English Writing and Correspondence

The ability to write effectively and precisely is a fundamental necessity of the legal profession and is a skill practised every day when writing letters, composing emails, reports or memoranda, drafting contracts or summarising minutes of meetings.

This course lasts 30 academic hours and is suitable for students at Intermediate to Advanced level. It may be taken in conjunction with the Legal English Vocabulary course.

The aims of the course are to:

• Improve students’ abilities in the key skills of writing within the context of a range of legal text types and topics.

• Enable students to engage more effectively in a range of typical situations found in legal practice and develop the skills and confidence needed to work efficiently in English.

The material covers such situations as offering advice, stating opinions, comparing and contrasting, evaluating, arguing, summarising, etc.

The course is designed to demonstrate how to write more concisely without loss of meaning, how to write more persuasively without loss of clarity, and how to adapt the tone and style to the required purpose. 

3. Legal English Vocabulary

Words are the tools of the lawyer’s trade are an essential resource for effective communication. This course concentrates on the vocabulary arising from the practice of commercial law but also presents more general legal English vocabulary. The topics covered are common to many legal systems thus giving the course an international dimension.

This course lasts 30 academic hours and is suitable for students at Intermediate to Advanced level. It may be taken in conjunction with the Legal English Writing and Correspondence course.

The aims of the course are to:

• Revise and expand vocabulary in key areas of commercial law

• Revise and expand general vocabulary related to legal systems and legal professions

• Present and practise a range of functional language to give the confidence and ability to engage more effectively in a range of typical situations found in legal practice

The course includes a wide variety of general and specialised law terms as well as techniques to systematically build up a wide legal vocabulary in fields of special interest to students.

Learners will also be encouraged to practise the language presented in the course in a variety of speaking and writing activities.

4. ILEC Exam Skills and Strategies

Anyone involved in the legal profession intending to work for an international law firm must demonstrate proficiency in the English language. The ILEC (International Legal English Certificate) from Cambridge ESOL is the only internationally recognised test of Legal English to employers with a unified benchmark of assessing legal English skills.

Our ILEC Exam Skills and Strategies course offers a systematic approach to developing techniques to help you improve your performance in all four papers: reading, writing, listening and speaking.

The course lasts 60 academic hours and is suitable for students at Upper Intermediate to Advanced level.

Aims:

The aims of the course are to:

• Present the format of the ILEC exam and the task types used in each paper

• Provide a range of techniques and strategies to help tackle particular tasks within the specified time limits

• Analyse the criteria used for assessing performance in the writing and speaking papers and present techniques on how best to satisfy those criteria in the exam

The course also includes a number of practice tests (individual papers and complete, timed exams) with analysis of sample answers, feedback and guidance by teaching staff with many years of experience in teaching exam preparation courses and working with international English language examinations.