Lawyers in a globalised world have to speak good English, and specifically the language of law and justice ; a challenge sometimes difficult to tackle.
There is a famous story of a young Frenchman in London who met a pretty English girl. Wishing to tell her that she was beautiful, he used the French word for « body », corps, and told her « You have a very beautiful corpse ». All he received from this girl was a slap in the face.
This young man was unlucky : one century earlier, she would certainly have understood some French, since this language was the international one for centuries. But ever since the Victorian Empire and the American global dominance of the 20th century, anyone who wants to speak with the rest of the world has to do it in English.
The juridic world is no different: once a Francophone haven (a lot of English legal jargon derives from French words, or at least from Latin), it is no mystery to anyone that international lawyers today have to speak decent English.
A conversation with Pietro Bembo (EJ Italy) tells us more about it. Pietro speaks very good English, and understands it very well. Even if, he says « Sometimes I feel like there are two different English languages : the one spoken by the British, and the one spoken by other people ! » He confesses he would like to see his colleagues speaking English better. Latin countries usually find it more challenging to learn, as it is far more different than it is to Germanic or Nordic languages. However, learning legal jargon specifically can be difficult even for Northern Europeans. Legalese is sometimes a challenge even for native speakers.
Thomas Benson (EJ Norway) goes further : « Lawyers don't speak English good enough! ». An active member of the network – he heads Jurismus, a structure devoted to lawyers under 40 – Thomas identifies the problem clearly. « I didn't study legal English at school », he says, « And this is the problem. I should have been offered this opportunity. I only learnt regular English ! I had to learn legal English myself ». In order to initiate a change, Thomas discussed the possibility of creating a way for lawyers to learn legal English efficiently : Jurismus is now busy implementing an English class in partnership with the London School of English.
Katharina Schenk (EJ Germany) is one of the Jurismus lawyers involved in the Academy. « Some members don't come to international events because they feel they don't speak good enough English », she explains. To initiate a change, she examinated several offers by different language schools and opted for the London-based one : « they had the best offer, the best partners... » Another lawyer from Jurismus, Olivier Vibert (EJ France) has taken an active part in the project and gave it a name : Jurismus Academy. « It is just a beginning », Olivier explains. « In the future we may offer other kinds of classes through Jurismus Academy, but for the moment we will focus on English classes ». Who knows : if you learn to speak it well enough, you may even be able to make a compliment to an attractive person in London…
