conference program - Facultatea de Drept - Dunarea de Jos

LEGAL EDUCATION VOCABULARYLecturer Ph.D. in progress Onorina GRECUSpiru Haret University, ConstantaFaculty Of Law And Public AdministrationAbstractLegal education is the education of individuals who intend to become legal professionals or thosewho simply intend to use their law degree to some end, either related to law (such as politics or academic) orbusiness. It includes: first degrees in law, which may be studied at either undergraduate or graduate leveldepending on the country, vocational courses which prospective lawyers are required to pass in somecountries before they may enter practice, and higher academic degrees.The law school program is divided following the European standards for university studies (Bolognaprocess): first a license program - three-year period, then a Master of law program - two-year period, andeventually, for those who are interested in academic careers, there is the third program of doctorate studies -three-year period.Legal English is now a distinctive field of language instruction within the overall ESP disciplinesand assuming an increasingly high profile in Law degree programmes across European universities,particularly among those of EU member states.While intercultural differences may pose little number of issues in Business English or be evenunimportant in Technical English instruction, they are of major importance to Legal English. The teachermust raise the students’ awareness of intercultural aspects, such as different sources of law when two legalsystems are involved, different juridical culture, different legal institutions.Nouns “lawyer” and “attorney” and “barrister” and “solicitor” as well are legal culture-boundterms. The common sense of the term “attorney” – “avocat” is very well known, as in “attorney-at-law”, theoriginal meaning as that of a person who acts in name and on behalf of someone on its request is somehowforgot. Thus, when one acts in his/her own behalf, we can say that he or she is “his own attorney”. In thisvery situation, “attorney” must be translated by “mandatar”, “reprezentant” or “împuternicit”. The term“lawyer” represents, at origin, any person who owns a law school diploma; it should be translated, in thislarger sense, as “jurist”. We could, as well, for this very term to use the expression “om de drept”. If both“lawyer” and “attorney” may be translated as “avocat”, one must remember that “lawyer” does notintrinsically mean “attorney”, after all one is a lawyer before being an attorney, representing or counselingclients.GALAŢI, 24 th -25 th of April 2009 35