Belgian Judicial Traineeship Admission Exam common mistakes
Belgian Judicial Traineeship Admission Exam · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing the legal analysis straight into the answer booklet in narrative prose without first identifying the legal question, the applicable rule and its source, then applying it to the facts (no IRAC/qualification step).
Candidates trained in university essays are used to discussing doctrine and policy; under time pressure they reproduce everything they know about the topic rather than structuring a solution, so the examiner cannot find the rule or the conclusion.
What to do instead
Before writing, spend two minutes drafting a skeleton on scrap paper: (1) legal question, (2) applicable provision with exact article number, (3) conditions of the rule, (4) factual application condition by condition, (5) conclusion. Then write only that skeleton out in full sentences. Practise with timed 25-minute cases until the structure becomes automatic.
Citing a rule without its exact legal basis, or citing the wrong instrument (e.g. invoking an old article number of the Civil Code after the 2022 Book reforms, or confusing a Code judiciaire article with a Judicial Code provision on jurisdiction with one on procedure).
Candidates learn principles from summaries and case law rather than from the consolidated text, and Belgian legislation has been substantially renumbered (old articles 1101 ff., 1382-1383, 544, 2262bis replaced by the new Books), so memorised numbers are often outdated.
What to do instead
Build a personal table of the 60-80 provisions that recur in exam fact patterns (contract formation and breach, extra-contractual liability, property, matrimonial regimes, judicial organisation, jurisdiction, limitation periods) with the current number, the old number and one-line content. Verify each against the official consolidated text (Justel/Federale Overheidsdienst Justitie) before the exam and never cite from memory alone.
Treating a criminal-law question as pure substantive law and forgetting the procedural layer (or vice versa): e.g. analysing whether an offence is established without checking limitation of the public action, jurisdiction, or the legality of the evidence obtained.
Exam questions are often deliberately drafted so that a procedural obstacle decides the outcome, but candidates read the facts as a story about guilt and answer only the question they expected.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed checklist for every criminal fact pattern: qualification of the facts, elements of the offence, grounds of justification, limitation of the public action, territorial and material jurisdiction, regularity of the investigation (search, interception, custody, nullity), then sentencing and possible suspension. Run the checklist explicitly in the answer, even briefly, so the examiner sees the procedural points addressed.
Confusing the courts and their competences: mixing up the justice of the peace, the police court, the court of first instance, the labour court, the enterprise court and the courts of appeal, or misstating the thresholds and the appeal routes.
Judicial organisation is learned as a list of institutions without a functional map, so candidates cannot place a given dispute in the right court or state which chamber and which appeal is available.
What to do instead
Draw one diagram mapping, for each court, its material competence, the amount thresholds, its territorial rules and its appeal route. Then take twenty short fact patterns and, for each, write only: competent court, legal basis, appeal court, time limit. Repeat until the mapping is recalled without notes.
Answering a constitutional or administrative-law question only with statutory law, ignoring the hierarchy of norms and the role of the Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights and EU law (direct effect, primacy, consistent interpretation).
Candidates compartmentalise the public-law syllabus and do not reflexively test a national rule against higher norms, even when the facts invite it (e.g. a measure restricting a fundamental right or a discriminatory condition).
What to do instead
For every public-law question, apply a hierarchy test in writing: is the impugned rule compatible with the Constitution, with the ECHR and with EU law? State the review mechanism (Constitutional Court, suspension and annulment before the Council of State, preliminary reference) and its procedural conditions. Keep a one-page summary of the key articles and leading principles at hand.
Ignoring the specific language regime of the role and producing an answer in the wrong language, or writing in the correct language but with translated or invented terminology for institutions and procedural acts.
Candidates prepare in their dominant language and translate on the spot, and Belgian institutional terminology is not symmetrical (e.g. the names of courts, of procedural documents and of offices differ between French and Dutch and have no literal equivalent).
What to do instead
Prepare a bilingual glossary of at least 150 institutional and procedural terms with the official equivalent, taken from official texts rather than dictionaries. Write at least three full practice answers per week in the exam language and have them corrected for terminology, not only grammar. Read judgments of the relevant language in the original.
Drafting a judgment or procedural document without the mandatory formal components: no identification of the parties and the court, no statement of the claims, no reasoned response to each claim, no operative part, or a reasoning that does not answer the parties' arguments.
Candidates write a legal essay instead of a judicial decision; they do not know that the reasoning must respond to each head of claim and that the formal structure is itself a ground of validity.
What to do instead
Memorise and practise a fixed template: heading and identification, procedural history, claims and pleas of the parties, factual findings, legal reasoning claim by claim, operative part, signature and date. Draft at least five complete decisions under time conditions and check each against the template and against the requirement that every claim receives an answer.
Missing the procedural time limits and their computation, or the consequences of their expiry (appeal periods, opposition, limitation periods, time limits for filing conclusions), and treating them as incidental detail.
Time limits are learned as isolated numbers without a computation method, and candidates do not realise that in many fact patterns the answer turns entirely on whether a deadline was met.
What to do instead
Learn the computation rules (starting point, dies a quo, suspension and interruption, extension for distance, computation when the deadline falls on a weekend or holiday) and build a table of the ten most frequently tested deadlines with their legal basis and consequences of expiry. In each fact pattern, explicitly state the deadline, the start date, the expiry date and the conclusion.
Reasoning in the abstract about contract and liability law without qualifying the facts: failing to determine the nature of the contract, the existence of a valid consent and cause, the transfer of property, or the coexistence of contractual and extra-contractual liability.
Candidates reproduce the general theory of obligations and then add a sentence about the facts, instead of first classifying the situation, which determines which regime and which limitation period apply.
What to do instead
Always begin with an explicit qualification paragraph: what type of contract or legal relationship is this, which regime governs it, which liability order applies, which limitation period follows. Then test the conditions of that regime one by one against the facts, and only afterwards discuss alternatives in subsidiary order.
Giving a conclusion that is either missing or non-committal ("it depends", "the court will decide"), or that contradicts the reasoning developed above.
Fear of being wrong leads candidates to hedge, and because they did not structure the analysis they cannot see that the facts do determine an answer; sometimes the conclusion is simply forgotten when time runs out.
What to do instead
End every answer with one sentence beginning "In conclusion" that states the result and, where relevant, the practical consequence (who wins, what sum, what procedural step). If the facts genuinely permit two outcomes, state the principal solution and the subsidiary one with the condition that distinguishes them. Reserve the last five minutes of every exercise for writing the conclusion.