A recent article in the magazine The Economist has highlighted a need for legal translators and linguists to work in ‘discovery’ (reviewing large quantities of documents and data to see which are relevant for a case). Indeed the article goes so far as to say at the end that some aspiring lawyers could do well to redirect their careers towards language-based positions.

Using some recent high-profile cases such as those involving the French couture houses Christian Louboutin and Yves Saint-Laurent, and Samsung v. Apple, the article points to a growing market for “cultural and linguistic experts”.

You can read the whole article here.

What do you think? Could this raise the profile of legal translation and linguistic/intercultural input?

You might also be interested in this guest post about translating during the document review process – When we are asked to translate useless materials…