Languages for Lawyers

Languages for Lawyers courses are designed to facilitate communication between American lawyers and their foreign clients and to transmit a sense of the foreign legal culture to the American practitioner. These courses are available to attorneys as well as JD students. CILE offers Languages for Lawyers courses in Arabic, French, German and Spanish.

The Languages for Lawyers courses are intended to introduce legal vocabulary and basic grammatical structures in the target language. They are not meant to enable the student to conduct  legal practice in the foreign language or to give legal advice in foreign law.

Law School Credit

Classes meet for two hours once a week for 14 weeks. Level I classes are taught in the fall and Level II classes are taught in the spring. There are no prerequisites for Level I classes. To sign up for a Level II class, you must have completed a Level I class, or have had at least one semester of college level instruction in the foreign language.

Consult the Registrar's course list to see if the language you want will be taught in the coming year.

Practicing Attorneys

The Language for Lawyers courses are also open to practicing attorneys and other legal professionals who want to improve their ability to communicate with their professional counterparts in these languages. 

To enroll, please contact CILE directly at cile@pitt.edu or 412-648-7023.