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 Legal 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 meets these needs.

ILEC (International Legal English Certificate) is high-level language qualification for lawyers set at levels B2 and C1 of the CEFR. ILEC is equivalent in level to the FCE and CAE, and assesses language skills in a legal context. Examinations at the C1 level may be used as proof of the level of language necessary to work in an international legal context.

The aims of ILEC
• to assess candidates’ ability to operate in English in an international legal environment
• to allow candidates to demonstrate to employers their ability to communicate in English with clients and colleagues
• to allow candidates to demonstrate to educational and training institutions their ability to follow a course of legal study where a significant portion of the instruction is in English
• to have a positive and beneficial impact on the content and delivery of English language training courses for legal purposes
• to provide an examination to do this which is fair to all candidates and which is delivered to international standards
• to allow test users to compare candidates’ results with other qualifications which are linked to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.


The content of ILEC
ILEC comprises the Test of Reading, the Test of Writing, the Test of Listening and the Test of Speaking. Each test is based on realistic texts, tasks and topics similar to those practitioners would expect to encounter in their daily working lives.

The examination texts and topics are set in the context of international commercial law.

The following list is an illustration of some of the areas of law featured in ILEC:
• Corporate
• Business associations
• Contract
• Sale of goods
• Real property
• Debtor-creditor
• Intellectual property
• Employment
• Competition
• Environmental
• Negotiable instruments
• Secured transactions
• Aspects of international law

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