ICLTE cheat sheet

Common-law systems treat prior decisions of higher courts in the same hierarchy as binding (stare decisis); civil-law systems give primary weight to codes and doctrine, with case law persuasive rather than formally binding.

Ratio decidendi is the legal principle necessary to the decision and binds lower courts; obiter dicta are peripheral remarks and carry persuasive weight only.

Inquisitorial proceedings entrust fact-finding and questioning to the court; adversarial proceedings entrust them to party advocates before a largely passive tribunal.

Equity developed in England as a corrective to the rigid common-law writ system; equitable remedies such as injunction, specific performance and rescission are discretionary, not available as of right.

Mixed jurisdictions combine civil-law and common-law elements: Scotland, South Africa, Quebec, Louisiana and Puerto Rico are the standard examples.

Monist states incorporate ratified treaties directly into domestic law; dualist states require a separate legislative act before a treaty has domestic effect.

EU regulations are directly applicable in member states and need no transposition; directives bind as to the result to be achieved and require national implementing measures.

Hierarchy of norms: constitution, then statute, then delegated legislation, then administrative guidance. A lower norm conflicting with a higher one is invalid to the extent of the conflict.

Primary sources create binding law: constitutions, statutes, regulations, treaties and, in common-law systems, binding precedent. Secondary sources such as textbooks and commentary persuade only.

Lex specialis derogat legi generali: a specific provision prevails over a general provision governing the same subject matter.

Lex posterior derogat legi priori: between instruments of equal rank, the later enactment displaces the earlier one to the extent of any inconsistency.

Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege: conduct is punishable only if a law in force at the time of the act defined it as an offence and prescribed the penalty.

Criminal liability generally requires actus reus (prohibited conduct or a duty-based omission) plus mens rea (intention, recklessness or negligence), unless the offence is one of strict liability.

Standard of proof: the civil standard is the balance of probabilities; the criminal standard is beyond reasonable doubt (expressed in England and Wales as being sure).

Res judicata bars the same parties from relitigating the same claim once a final judgment on the merits has been entered.

In common-law systems a limitation period bars the remedy while the underlying right subsists; in civil-law systems prescription generally extinguishes the right itself.

Jurisdiction has three dimensions: subject-matter, territorial and personal. A court needs the applicable heads before it can properly hear a matter.

Shall imposes a mandatory obligation in traditional drafting; may confers a discretion; must is preferred in plain-language drafting because it is unambiguous.

A representation is a statement of past or present fact that induces the contract; a warranty is a promise inside the contract, breach of which sounds in damages.

An indemnity is a primary obligation to make good specified losses; a guarantee is a secondary obligation to answer for another party's default.

Without prejudice protects genuine settlement communications from being admitted in evidence; it does not make the underlying facts privileged or inadmissible.

Subject to contract marks an agreement as non-binding until formal execution; without those words a concluded bargain may arise on acceptance.

False friends: French éventuel means possible, not eventual; Spanish actual means current, not actual; German eventuell means possibly.

Terms of art carry a fixed technical meaning that overrides ordinary usage: consideration, estoppel, lien, trust, escrow.

A civil-law notary (notaire, Notar) is a public officer with a drafting and authentication monopoly; a common-law notary mainly administers oaths and certifies documents.

Best efforts and reasonable efforts have no settled common-law definition; their content is fixed by the contract, so define them expressly to avoid dispute.

Legal translation prioritises legal effect over literal form: the target text must produce the same legal consequences in the target system, not the same word count.

Concepts without a target equivalent (trust, consideration, escrow, common law) are rendered by a recognised functional equivalent plus the source term in parentheses at first use.

Modal verbs carry operative weight: rendering shall as a permissive form converts an obligation into a discretion and alters enforceability.

Defined terms must be translated identically at every occurrence; synonym variation is a defect in legal register, not stylistic improvement.

Dates and amounts: convert format explicitly (DD/MM/YYYY versus MM/DD/YYYY) and spell out the month where ambiguity is possible; restate figures in words where the source does.

Latin maxims with settled equivalents are translated by the equivalent (res judicata gives chose jugée); those without one are kept in Latin with a gloss.

Match the target jurisdiction's drafting convention: plain-language regimes prefer must and the active voice, while traditional registers use shall, nominalisations and the passive.

A sworn or certified translation carries the translator's declaration and, in many jurisdictions, a stamp or registration number; it certifies accuracy, not the legal validity of the source.

Gratuitous capitalisation of ordinary nouns is a marker of translationese; capitalise defined terms and party names as the target convention requires.

Standard contract architecture: title, parties, recitals, definitions, operative provisions, representations and warranties, covenants, conditions, indemnities, term and termination, boilerplate, signature blocks, schedules.

An entire-agreement clause supersedes prior negotiations and representations; defeating a misrepresentation claim may additionally require an explicit non-reliance clause.

A severability clause preserves the remainder of the contract if one provision is void; without it, some legal systems may treat the whole agreement as failing.

A notices clause fixes addresses, permitted method and deemed time of receipt; serving termination contrary to it can invalidate the notice.

IRAC structures legal analysis as Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion; the Application section must map facts to each element of the rule in turn.

A letter before action states the claim, its legal basis, the remedy sought and a deadline; in England and Wales the Pre-Action Protocol regime requires it before most civil claims are issued.

An affidavit is a sworn written statement of fact; a witness statement is unsworn, and its weight depends on the maker's oral evidence and credibility.

Board minutes record attendance and quorum, resolutions passed, declarations of interest and the basis for decisions; they are the primary evidence of corporate authority.

An engagement letter fixes scope, fee basis, conflicts checks, confidentiality and the client's instructions; undefined scope is the most common source of fee disputes.

An undertaking is a personal, enforceable promise given by a lawyer in practice; breach can be enforced by the court and by the regulator irrespective of the client's instructions.

Privilege belongs to the client, not the lawyer; only the client may waive it, and any waiver must be knowing and voluntary.

Confidentiality is wider than privilege, covers all information learned in the retainer, and survives termination of the retainer and in most codes the client's death.

The duty to act in the client's best interests is bounded by the duty of candour to the tribunal; a lawyer may not mislead the court on the client's instructions.

Competence includes recognising the limits of one's expertise and referring or associating specialist counsel when the matter exceeds them.

A lawyer may not act where a significant risk exists that the lawyer's own interest, or a former or current client's interest, will materially interfere with the new client's interests.

Client money must be held in a designated client account separate from firm funds, reconciled regularly and subject to external audit; misappropriation is a criminal offence in most jurisdictions.

Referral fees and fee-sharing with non-lawyers are restricted or prohibited depending on jurisdiction and must in any event be disclosed to the client.

Supervision duties extend to trainees, paralegals and outsourced providers; the supervising lawyer remains accountable for the quality and ethics of the work.

Conflicts screening has three steps: identify the parties and their affiliates, search the firm's current and former matter records, then assess whether the new matter is substantially related and materially adverse.

An imputed conflict disqualifies the whole firm; a timely, documented information barrier plus the conflicted lawyer's non-participation and no sharing of confidential information may rebut disqualification in some jurisdictions.

A former-client conflict arises only where the new matter is substantially related to the earlier representation and adverse to the former client; general expertise is not a conflict.

Advance waivers of future conflicts are enforced only where the client is sophisticated and the waiver is informed and specific as to the type of conflict contemplated.

Joint clients (co-defendants, spouses, joint venturers) share privilege between themselves; if they later litigate against each other, neither may assert the joint privilege against the other.

Inadvertent disclosure of a privileged document does not automatically waive privilege; the recipient must notify the sender and return, delete or sequester the material pending resolution.

Under the GDPR, personal data may leave the EEA only on an adequacy decision or another Article 46 safeguard such as standard contractual clauses, with transfer impact assessment.

Confidentiality duties extend to email, cloud storage and AI tools; entering client data into a public generative AI service can breach both the retainer and data-protection law.

Conflicts checks must be rerun when a new party, affiliate or adverse interest joins an existing matter, not only at intake.

Translation memory matches are graded by fuzzy percentage; a 100% match is exact only as to the source segment and can still be contextually wrong if the source has since been edited.

A termbase hit overrides a translation-memory hit when they conflict, because terminology is the controlled variable and memory is only a proposal.

Automated QA catches number, date, tag, terminology and segment-length inconsistencies but cannot verify legal effect; human legal review remains mandatory.

Four-eyes principle: drafter and reviewer must be different people, and the reviewer signs off against a written checklist of defined criteria.

Version control requires a naming convention, a change log and a single source of truth so that superseded drafts cannot be circulated or filed.

Track-changes redlining preserves the negotiation history; circulating a clean version without the redline destroys the audit trail of agreed amendments.

Document metadata (author, comments, tracked changes, hidden text) can reveal privileged advice or negotiating positions; scrub it before external release, including after PDF conversion.

OCR errors in scanned contracts can alter names, amounts and dates; every figure produced by OCR must be verified against the page image.

Useful workflow metrics: turnaround time, first-pass yield, rework rate and on-time delivery, each measured against a defined scope rather than raw word counts.