Latvia - Latvian Judicial Training Centre - EJTN

The Latvian Judicial Training Centre (LJTC) is a Foundation, based on the agreement with the Court Administration of the Republic of Latvia, which provides initial and on-going training on legal and non-legal matters for judges of the 1st and 2nd instance, land-book judges and court staff.

Since 2010, LJTC has been ensuring the provision of comprehensive training for prosecutors and has become one of the major players in judicial training for other legal professions – sworn advocates and practicing lawyers.

One of the additional and quite attractive forms of seminar provision is interdisciplinary training in which representatives from the judiciary, prosecution services, advocates and other professions share their view points and analyse the court praxis on concrete matters.

Along with the training on legal topicalities, LJTC offers soft skills programmes, which sometimes are underestimated from the decision makers’ viewpoints, but are highly important to a judge’s performance on a daily basis. Communication (and oratory) skills are important to master to ensure the quality of case management both before and during the court hearing and especially when dealing with involved parties with insufficient legal knowledge. The judge has to remember that there is a human being behind every case and the application of an article of a law might change somebody’s life forever. The judge has to have skills to present the decision, explain it (if it is foreseen by the law) and to be sure that parties have understood it.

LJTC has developed other programms that assist in building capacities of court management (i.e. supervision sessions for chief judges), school lecturers (sessions on adult education, presentation techniques, language, methodologies, etc.) and others.

In 2004, LJTC became a member of EJTN and has since then taken an active part in some of the working groups as well as in other projects administered by EJTN.

LJTC has obtained an ISO 9001-2008 quality management certificate that certifies that the organisation has a good, transparent management system and processes that ensures client-oriented training events and other offers.