I have trained as a lawyer in Greece (LLB, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and the UK (LLM, Cambridge University). I practised law with a large Greek firm for several years and I have worked as a legal researcher at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. For 4 years I taught legal English to judges at the Greek National School for the Judiciary and to lawyers at seminars organized by the Thessaloniki Bar Association.

I have considerable teaching experience in the fields of IT law, data protection law and international transactions. As adjunct faculty, I have taught at the Tulane Law School Study Abroad Program, the University of Macedonia and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. I have been a speaker at IT law conferences and I have published in the fields of IT law and human rights law (unfortunately in Greek only).

I started translating as a law student and enjoyed it tremendously. As a practising attorney who often worked with foreign clients, I was frustrated at the subpar quality of legal translations offered by translation agencies. I ended up translating critical documents such as contracts and court briefs myself. When I stopped practising law, I continued translating either full-time or part-time to this day.

Producing accurate texts in both Greek and English is part of my professional training. Apart from my linguistic skills, my strength as a legal translator lies in the deep understanding of both the Greek legal system and Common Law, which is the legal system of most English-speaking territories, such as the UK, US and Australia. Many concepts of common law do not exist at all in civil law jurisdictions like Greece–and vice versa. Therefore, a competent legal translator has to be able to come up with appropriate terminology that actually makes sense. Due to the complexity of legal concepts and wording, only an experienced lawyer is able to produce a final text which is precise, unambiguous and blunder-free. During my career, I have seen too many cringe-worthy English<>Greek translations. Some of them were actually produced by experienced translators who nevertheless lacked legal training. Legal translations between languages of different legal systems involve much more than simply translating the technical jargon.

Poor legal translations can be very costly or even catastrophic for an unsuspecting client. As part of my services, I work closely with my clients to ensure that the appropriate meaning is conveyed, alerting them to any linguistic inconsistencies or similar problems that I spot in the source documents or translations.

My legal translation rates reflect my unrivalled expertise and vary somewhat depending on volume, complexity and urgency, but generally start at EUR 0.08 per source word for translating and EUR 0.025 per source word for proofreading/editing or EUR 40 per hour. Certified translations are also available at extra cost.

Besides legal documents, I also enjoy the variety of translating documents in the fields of computers and technology, psychology, architecture, science, art and design, food, wine and journalism.