Increasing globalisation has led to English becoming the lingua franca of international legal practice requiring L2 legal professionals to develop high level skills in English thus creating significant challenges for language educators who may not have a background in law. This article provides an overview of language education for L2 legal professionals. Developments and practice in English for Legal Purposes (ELP) viewed within English for Specific Purposes (ESP) are presented to provide a model focusing on the interrelated dimensions of learner context, methodology and teacher background. The article acknowledges the contribution of genre studies in providing pedagogical descriptions of written legal language and stress the need for further ethnographic investigation to identify and describe relevant oral legal genres.