Legal Translation Training - A Way Forward for Aspiring Lawyers in a Clogged Job Market?

In an increasingly competitive and congested job market, this paper examines new career opportunities open to linguistically minded young lawyers. The globalisation of recent decades has led to a soaring demand for the translation of legal documents, inter alia in cross-border financial transactions, patent and IP cases, and litigation.We are now at a fork in the road – on the one hand bespoke automated systems are able to handle large volumes for discovery/disclosure and information purposes translation, whilst on the other there is an increasing need for expert lawyer-linguists to work on major cases, multilingual legislation and at international courts. Interdisciplinary fields – comparative law, transnational law, legal linguistics – provide further career opportunities outside the commercial world.Market stimulus and moves to professionalise legal translation have led to lawyer- linguist training being offered jointly by law and language faculties – these may be standalone courses or follow on from a first degree. Notable examples of innovative education programs from France, Italy and Latvia will be discussed, and various interpretations of the role of “lawyer-linguist” will be explored, citing in particular Canada and the EU.Legal translation is the ultimate legal and linguistic challenge – a gauntlet waiting to be picked up by a new generation as part of a fully globalised mature legal services market