A course entitled “Legal English for the European Union” will be taking place from 11 to 13 July 2018, in Madrid, Spain, at the national distance education university (Fundación UNED).

The trainers are highly experienced in legal language, and have been involved for many years, amongst other things, in several large-scale European projects aimed at improving the language skills of the judiciary.

The course addresses a very wide audience: students of English, translation, criminology or law (and other related degrees); judges; prosecutors; lawyers; court advisors; legal advisors; advisors to or staff of Ministries of Justice; mediators; criminologists; police forces, social workers, etc.

The course will cover aspects such as the grammatical and textual peculiarities of legal English, its registers, varieties and pronunciation. It will also include an introduction to the vocabulary of common law legal systems as against civil law legal systems and how the differences between both have an impact on the legal terminology used in the European Union.

Legal experts will talk about judicial cross-border cooperation and mutual assistance as well as about the European Union’s penitentiary system.

The sessions will be in English and will include the following topics: the pronunciation of legal English; legal English for the European Union (sources of vocabulary and registers); an introduction to legal vocabulary in English; legal vocabulary in practice (civil, criminal, human rights, cybercrime, etc.); distinctive features of legal English; practice with legal English exercises; legal English and the European Union’s judicial cooperation networks and the European penitentiary space and European prison rules.

The course has 1 ECTS and registration is available online.

For more information, including the detailed programme, see the course website (mainly in Spanish, click at top right for English where available).

If you have any questions, you can send an email to: esamaniego(at)flog.uned.es or bperez-cabello(at)flog.uned.es.