Legal English differs from standard English in that it refers to the style of English used by legal professionals in...
A strong and practical legal English course based at PNE will help you get the job you want in law, make you more...
If you want to develop your English language skills within a legal context when working in commercial law or studying...
No. Your TOLES certificate is valid for life.
TOLES Exam is only held 5 times a year and the schedule is fixed. If you want to take the exam, contact us. The test dates for the official exam test in 2017 are: January 26, 2017; March 23, 2017; June 22, 2017; August 24, 2017; November 23, 2017 (Closing date for applications: 28 working days in advance of exam date)
The TOLES certificate is evidence of your level of legal English. Most of the world’s leading law firms recognize the value of the TOLES exams as part of your CV and several leading law firms use TOLES in their recruiting and assessment processes.
Law firms and organizations that have already entered candidates for the TOLES exams include:
The Law Society of England and Wales
Linklaters Oppenhoff and Radler
Allen and Overy LLP
Baker and McKenzie
Price waterhouse Coopers
KPMG
Sony Ericsson
Daimler Chrysler
European Court of Justice
European Central Bank
Deutsche Bundesbank
Qatar Steel Company
Qatar Petrochemical Corporation
DuPont
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
Siemens
Learning Legal English through specialized book is a good thing but it’s not enough for Legal English skills. Why not? All the practicing lawyers will recognize this, and for future graduates, you should know when you become a lawyer, 80% of your time will be filled by reading and analyzing contracts or drafting them. So most of your time spent actually writing, not speaking.
The exam series is designed to allow every student of Legal English to make a start at gaining a certificate. The TOLES Foundation is a huge support towards learning legal vocabulary and students can do well in the exam even if they are just at the stage of learning basic grammar structures. The TOLES Higher requires at least an intermediate level of general English and the TOLES Advanced requires high intermediate to advanced level of general English.
There is no obligation for you to progress through all 3 levels of the exam. However, we strongly recommend that they do so. Students who are familiar with the many fluency-based English tests on the market may dismiss Foundation as ‘too easy’ upon first sight and not realize that this is an accuracy-based exam. Learners who already have very advanced certificates from other exams and courses have been very surprised by the demands of TOLES Foundation once they try a range of testing material. However, all of them are designed to be beneficial in their own right and if teacher and student agree on a course of training followed by a particular exam then that is fine with us.
There are several reasons for this. We encourage a great deal of speaking in the classroom and the fact that we have no Teacher’s Book encourages more genuine debate and interaction in class. Students should constantly talk about the law and language under scrutiny and should constantly be comparing legal concepts and systems to their own. However, there is no speaking skills in the final exams. This is because of advice from employers, whose overwhelming priority is strong and accurate writing skills. They tell us that they can test English speaking skills at interview and, very importantly, that a lawyer can make mistakes when speaking which would be unforgivable mistakes during the process of legal drafting.