Legal secretaries at the General Court of the European Union

The General Court of the European Union (‘the General Court’) is launching a permanent call for applications in order to establish a database containing a number of applications, which may be consulted when a need arises for the recruitment of legal secretaries as temporary staff ¹ or auxiliary contract staff for the Members of the General Court ².

Working closely with and under the supervision of the above-mentioned judges, legal secretaries will be responsible for preparing documents relating to the judicial handling of cases in which those judges act as rapporteur or assessor.

The duties to be performed shall require in particular:

• full legal education as evidenced by a university degree in law;
• thorough knowledge of European Union law, in particular in one or more of the areas covered by the General Court’s jurisdiction, as well as a good knowledge of procedural rules and adversarial techniques;
• good analytical and summarising skills when faced with complex legal questions;
• ability to draft legal texts in French (a minimum level of 1 in French is required); ³
• satisfactory command of IT tools and legal databases;
• good ability to communicate with interlocutors from diverse legal backgrounds, as well as a cultural and linguistic openness.

Without being necessary, the following will be an advantage for the employment in question:

• professional experience in a similar role in a court or in a law firm, a governmental entity, or an institution or body of the European Union;
• good knowledge of other official languages of the European

The role of legal secretary requires a high degree of availability, a genuine ability to work in a team as well as a high degree of responsibility, rigour, organisation and discretion.

If you are interested in possible recruitment within the General Court and if you consider that, you meet the necessary conditions, you may submit your application via: EU CV online : https://curia.europa.eu/apply.

By submitting an application in response to this permanent call for applications, candidates have no guarantee of being called for an interview or of being offered a job with the General Court.

In the event of a vacancy, Members of the General Court will be able to consult the database and select the candidate whose profile matches the requirements of the post to be filled. In this case, the person concerned will be contacted, by email or telephone, directly by the Member’s Cabinet.

The data will remain active for six months, or for a shorter period if you delete your online CV before this period expires. Once this period has elapsed, you may decide to reactivate your data if you wish your profile to remain in the database. Once your data has become inactive, your profile can no longer be consulted or taken into account in anonymous searches, and only you can access it to reactivate it. After twelve months of inactivity, the data are completely deleted from the database.

The purpose of the collection, the way in which personal data of applicants is processed and the period of time for which it is kept through this application are detailed in the attached notice.

1 Auxiliary contract staff replace legal secretaries prevented from performing their duties due to illness or by reason of maternity leave.
2 Officials may be seconded in the interest of the service. In the event of replacement of a legal secretary on sick leave or maternity leave, officials would be placed at the disposal of the Cabinet concerned.
3 A language training and development scheme is offered depending on the level of French of the successful candidates.