Irene Dijkmans is a Belgian lawyer who studied law and notarial law at the Catholic University of Leuven and was admitted to the Belgian bar in 1981. She is a partner of R. & L. Schuermans and has combined legal practice with accredited family mediation and a judicial role as a deputy justice of the peace.
Background
Irene Dijkmans was born in 1956. Her documented formative years are connected with Belgium, where she completed her legal education in the early 1980s.
The Belgian legal profession of that period was organised around local bar associations, which admitted and supervised lawyers, and around the notariat, a separate branch of the legal profession that handles formal deeds and authentic documents. Her training took place within this dual structure of advocacy and notarial practice.
Education
Dijkmans studied at the Catholic University of Leuven, where she graduated with distinction in 1980 with a licentiate in law (Lic. Juris). The university was founded in 1425 and is one of the oldest in Europe. In 1968 its Leuven campus was divided into the Flemish-language Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in the historic city and the French-language Université catholique de Louvain, which moved to Louvain-la-Neuve. Her studies thus belonged to the Leuven institution that remained in the historic city.
She then obtained a licentiate in notarial law (Lic. Not.) in 1981. During the same period she undertook traineeships in both advocacy and the notariat, so her legal education combined courtroom and notarial training.
Career
After completing her studies, Dijkmans was admitted to the Belgian bar in 1981. Bar associations in Belgium are local bodies of lawyers attached to particular courts, and admission to one of them allowed her to practise as an advocate in that jurisdiction. She practises as a lawyer at the Turnhout bar, in the Antwerp province of Belgium.
She is a partner of R. & L. Schuermans. The Schuermans name is associated with Schuermans advocaten, a law firm founded in 1931 with offices in Turnhout and Antwerp, which describes itself as one of the longest-established law practices in Belgium.
In family matters, Dijkmans has been accredited as a lawyer-mediator since 2003. She served as a practice teacher in the family-mediation training programme at the Catholic University of Leuven and assisted in mediation training at Mediv, an organisation that offers professional courses. Her practice also includes a judicial role as deputy justice of the peace, a part-time judicial office that handles civil and local matters at first instance in Belgium.
Dijkmans has also acted as counsel in proceedings before the Belgian Court of Cassation, the supreme court that reviews questions of law. Court records list her as counsel in a 2009 case before the bar of Hasselt and in a 2015 case before the bar of Turnhout.
Membership
Dijkmans is a member of the Turnhout Bar, the local association of lawyers practising before the courts of Turnhout. Belgian bar associations regulate the professional conduct of their members and organise admission to practice within their jurisdiction.
