German for Law and Administration B2/C1

Cursus beschrijving

This language course introduces you to German legal language and its use as a valuable tool by state authorities. Foreign law students, lawyers, and officials are taught language that helps them express their ideas, communicate, understand, and be understood, as well as legal language for justice and administration.

If you take a face-to-face course, we offer sessions in the exclusive LcL Language Lab in which you work on case studies and play different roles (judge, lawyer, defendant) to participate in a court hearing and summarize or assess the judgment that was made. As you complete these tasks, you work thoroughly on your speaking skills and pronunciation.

Learn to see the German language as a tool in the lawyer’s trade, putting laws and verdicts into words. Develop an understanding of how the law is communicated by language. The course demonstrates the difference in how language is used in Austrian and European law proceedings and how language is used in everyday communication between citizens. Lawyers must make themselves clear to their colleagues and clients, and judges must be understood by witnesses. Learn binding German language rules for binding regulations: for military commands, police orders, and definitions in legislative texts used for creating norms. In doing so, you’ll learn to clearly understand how to use German in law and avoid common mistakes like multi-clause sentences, reference errors, and overuse of loan words.

At the start of the course, you’re presented with background knowledge about the principles of the BGB (closing contracts, legal competence, proxies, and contesting) and the Austrian court system. Then, you learn to write flawless legal appraisals, use rhetorical exaggeration with purpose, and create long-term improvement in your writing for official purposes.

This German course for legal authorities introduces you to the most important methods and strategies for clear, correct, and cohesive German administrative language. Discover how coherent law texts are created and do your part to make communication between administrators and citizens easier.

These German legal language lessons help beginners and advanced learners use correct and elegant German in seminars, exams, and work. Find out how to process legal cases in your law studies, clerkship, and practice. Learn to use specialized language and loan words, explain complicated situations clearly, and avoid multi-clause sentences, reference errors, and overuse of loan words.

The application of legal and administrative German described here is demonstrated with numerous examples, which include language tasks relevant to the subject matter. In addition, the course teaches German grammar, spelling, and syntax as the primary method of communication for legal cases.

Legal speech and writing

- The connection between language and law: How legal texts are created

- Understand legal and official information, clarify connections, and present them in a clear and comprehensible manner

- Use effective methods for using loan words and jargon as well as for explaining complicated facts clearly in administrative language

- Choosing sophisticated German versus making communication between administrators and citizens more efficient and cooperative

- Binding language rules for binding regulations: military commands, police orders, and for definitions in legislative texts used for creating norms

- Legal background knowledge about the BGB’s principles and the court system in Austria

- Closing contracts, proxies, and contesting

- An in-depth overview of spelling and grammar, using sentence patterns to your advantage, and perfecting sentence structure

- Understand and practice using German legal and administrative language in practical tasks