English is an essential tool for any lawyer working with international matters. It is the lingua franca of the legal profession, of business and of international affairs.
Legal employers need a tool to assess whether their legal staff and prospective employees have a sufficient level of English to be able to communicate efficiently with clients, colleagues and professionals in other countries, and to handle information written in English. At the same time, law students and newly-qualified lawyers need to be able to prove that they have these skills.
The Cambridge ILEC - International Legal English Certificate - meets these needs.
What is ILEC?
- The International Legal English Certificate (ILEC) assesses language skills in a legal context
- The ILEC is set at levels B2 and C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and equivalent in level to the FCE and CAE
- ILEC is produced and assessed by University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations, in collaboration with Translegal – Europe’s leading firm of lawyer-linguists and recognised by leading associations of lawyers
- The exam is based on realistic tasks of the kind that legal practitioners would expect to encounter in their daily working lives
Who is ILEC for?
- The exam is a high-level legal-oriented language qualification for lawyers and law students
- Successful candidates are able to use the language in practical situations, to participate in meetings, negotiations, and discussions of a legal nature, express opinions clearly are able to understand and produce texts such legal correspondence and memoranda
- For courses to prepare for the ILEC please click here
Can-Do Statements
Listening and Speaking
- CAN follow discussions with only occasional need for clarification
- CAN deal with unpredictable questions
- CAN argue their case effectively and specify needs precisely
- CAN engage in an extended conversation with colleagues and clients on matters within own authority/competence
Reading and Writing
- CAN understand the general meaning of more complex reports
- CAN, given enough time, write a report that communicates the desired message
- CAN write most correspondence he/she is likely to be required to do
- CAN, within reasonably short time, understand most reports that he/she is likely to come across
Content of Exam
- Test of Reading (Duration 75 min.)
- Test of Writing (Duration 75 min.)
- Test of Listening (Duration 40 min.)
- Test of Speaking (Duration 16 min.)
Reading Paper 
Part 1 
