The development of innovative lifelong education programs belongs to one of the main strategies of the University of Osijek. Lifelong learning, as defined in the document Strategy of the Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek 2011–2020, represents “one of the important guidelines for development of higher education in the European Union”. And thus, one of the goals of the university was the strengthening of its internal integration that “will be achieved through the development of lifelong learning programs by integrating expertise of various University units” (J. J. Strossmayer, 2011:54). The Department of Foreign Languages of the Faculty of Law in Osijek has initiated the introduction of a new lifelong education program for lawyers in 2011 and started its implementation in 2012. This was a pragmatic response to the requirements of the EU labor market being opened to Croatian lawyers. According to data from December 2012, the European Union needed translators, interpreters, lawyer linguists, administrators, heads of departments and other officials in the field of Communication, Legal Affairs and Program, Management in the offices of the European Commission, the Court of the EU and other institutions whose employees should master both legal and linguistic knowledge. Departments for Foreign Languages of the Law Faculty in Zagreb and the Law Faculty in Osijek initiated their Lifelong Education Program for Lawyer Linguists.
The Lifelong Learning Program for Lawyer linguists in Osijek differs from that in Zagreb and encompasses the courses developed in accordance with the expertise of individual teachers in the field of EU Law, foreign languages and translation. The program consists of 130 hours and seven courses allocated with 20 ECTS credits: English Legal Translation, German Legal Translation, French Legal Translation, Theory of Legal Translation and EU-Terminology, Croatian Language for Lawyer Linguists, EU Law for Lawyer Linguists and EU Vocabulary and On-line Translation Tools. The courses are mostly carried out by professors teaching at the Law Faculty of Osijek, but also by guest professors from the Faculty of Humanities for the courses Croatian Language for Lawyer Linguists and French Legal Translation. Participants are graduate lawyers and senior law students, as well as graduates of the foreign language studies from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences who are interested in acquiring further knowledge in EU law and the legal English, legal German and legal French. In the first term, 25 participants participated in this program and the evaluation lists they filled in at the end of the program indicate that they were very satisfied with it.
The lifelong education of lawyer-linguists has become a tradition at the Faculty of Law Osijek. Every year we publish a tender for new applicants in local public media and on the website of the Faculty. In the academic year 2020/2021 we had 38 attendants who have successfully finished the program. By widening their knowledge in EU Law and comparative legal terminology and developing their communication and translation skills in the working languages of the EU, the attendants will be more self-confident and more qualified to meet the requirements of the opening European labor market.
Associate prof. Ljubica Kordić
