A proactive approach to English-medium instruction in legal education: Using text mining for legal terminology acquisition

Abstract

Teaching law in English in an international and multilingual classroom has become common due to the internationalization of legal studies; however, it poses a serious challenge. Lecturers must not only convey the relevant legal content but also ensure that students have proper handling of the terminology. This is not an easy task. As law is strongly intertwined with language, it is best taught in the language of the law itself (e.g., Dutch law is taught in Dutch). This article addresses potential difficulties reflecting on how to support law students in acquiring non-English legal terminology in a multilingual and international classroom, where English is the language of instruction. The paper aims to demonstrate how text mining can be applied to create learning materials for law students that would help them build their competences in relevant legal terminology in English and thus allow a more proactive approach to studying law in this language. After outlining the key issues related to English-medium instruction and English legal terminology, this paper presents several examples of the application of text mining to ECtHR judgments. One of the main findings is that the use of text mining can significantly assist teaching by creating meaningful learning material, as it can extract necessary information from any type of legal texts. It can also be concluded that these novel methodologies are consistent with proactivity, which could influence the study of law as much as it does legal practice. Educational technologies make way for further exploration of proactiveness as a concept in the context of legal studies.