Translation trainees are faced with difficulties when trying to apply a functional approach to translation practice based on a more dynamic or pragmatic equivalence of meaning (Alcaraz, 2002). A majority of students do not seem at ease with the context where legal translation takes place and its specialised language, and their lack of acquaintance with this type of language and texts often results in highly literal translations which are unsuccessful in rendering text function and meaning. Consequently, their translations are frequently trapped in microtextuality (terms, expressions), never reaching macrotextual (document function, overall meaning) and extratextual (target receiver, communicative setting, legal effect) dimensions. In order to combat this, a series of tasks were designed to aid in avoiding excessive literality. This paper presents and reflects on the usefulness of such strategies in the translation classroom.