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The Legal Sector Code (LSC) has been approved

In September 2024, the Minister of Trade, Industry, and Competition (the dtic) approved the Legal Sector Code in terms of section 9(1) of the B-BBEE Act. The Administration has committed itself to accelerate transformation guided by the preamble of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa which emphasises the need to correct the injustices of the past. This is captured in the statement of intent of the Government of National Unity (GNU).

The process of drafting the Legal Sector Code commenced in the previous administration led by the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development together with the Legal Practice Council. This process has paved the way for the Sector to achieve its Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) objectives as listed below:

  1. Ownership target of 50% and black women ownership of 25% over 5 years.
  2. A Management Control (executive and board participation), target of 50% representation of black practitioners and a target of 25% for black women practitioners, particularly as equity partners and associates.
  3. A Skills Development target of 3,5% expenditure on training programmes for black candidates. The aim is also to ensure training in specialised skills for black legal practitioners, candidate legal practitioners, and black junior advocates within the following designated categories: black women, black youth, black people with disabilities, and black people from rural areas.
  4. A Procurement target of 60% by the private sector, and there is a target of 80% to be achieved through the specialised procurement scorecard applicable to the public sector.

This will ensure fair and equitable access to specialised areas of law and complex matters when the state procures legal services from black Legal Sector Measured Entities (LSMEs) and ensure the sustainability of LSMEs. The implementation of the Legal Sector Code is in line with the objectives of B-BBEE and will enhance inclusive growth in line with the transformation objectives of the Government of National Unity (GNU). There is strong evidence to support the transformation of the legal sector which this Sector Code will help accelerate. We look forward to the speedy implementation of the Legal Sector Code.

In January and February 2021, three previous articles dealt with the draft code. The reader is advised to browse through these three articles for a basic insight into the Sector Code, particularly Ownership and Management Control as it was in 2021.

In 2007, before the establishment of the LPC, the Council of the Law Society of South Africa, developed and adopted a Legal Sector Charter as a Transformation Charter (“the Transformation Charter”) in terms of Section 12 of the B-BBEE Act. The Transformation Charter represented a historic milestone in the commitment towards the transformation of the legal transformation of the legal profession. It came about as a result of an extensive process of consultations which culminated in the legal profession undertaking the responsibility for the drafting of the Legal Sector Charter (“the Legal Sector Charter”). The Legal Sector Charter embodies the profession’s commitment to transformation and recognises that a strong, independent, and representative profession is essential to ensure access to justice and to promote the Bill of Rights, as contained in the Constitution.

The Legal Sector Charter recognised that, whereas significant progress has been made in restructuring and transforming our society and its institutions, systemic inequalities and unfair discrimination remain deeply embedded in social structures, practices, and attitudes, undermining the aspirations and values underpinning the country’s constitutional democracy. The LPC was established as a national statutory body to, together with its provincial councils, regulate the affairs of and exercise jurisdiction over all legal practitioners in South Africa, that is, attorneys, advocates, and candidate legal practitioners.

The purpose of the LPA is to, inter-alia:

(a) “Provide a legislative framework for the transformation and restructuring of the legal profession that embraces the values underpinning the Constitution and ensures that the rule of law is held…”
(b) Broaden access to justice by putting in place:


(iii) measures that provide equal opportunities for all aspirant legal practitioners in order to have a legal profession that broadly reflects the demographics of the Republic;…

Until now, law firms have used the generic scorecards contained in the Generic Codes to measure their compliance with the provisions of the B-BBEE Act and their commitment to empowerment. Whilst the Generic Codes have proven to be useful in certain ways, there is a need for a sector specific-code in the legal profession that recognises the specific unique features and characteristics of the industry. For example, advocates cannot, because of the nature of their practice, be measured under Ownership and Management Control.

At all relevant and material times, the implementation of the LSC should be underpinned by the following objectives:

  1. Ensuring that black women are equitably represented in the management and ownership structures of legal practices;
  2. Providing access to justice and outlining the responsibilities and obligations of stakeholders in addressing those challenges;
  3. Improving the availability of quality legal services by ensuring the provision of continuing and sustained education and skills development;
  4. Enhancing, developing, and empowering legal professionals, and in particular designated categories, in all fields of legal practice especially specialised areas of law;
  5. Addressing challenges of entry into the legal profession, with specific emphasis on challenges experienced by law students and trainees from designated categories;
  6. Ensuring the availability of quality legal training and education by ensuring the availability of continuing legal training and education; and providing quality in–service training and learnership opportunities;
  7. Implementing measures to address the provision and availability of pro bono services and community-based legal services, thus ensuring access to affordable legal services for all people in South Africa, particularly marginalized, poor and rural communities;
  8. facilitating the transformation of the legal services sector to ensure that it is representative of the demographics of South Africa, ensuring that a body of well-trained and competent providers of legal services are developed to enable
    equitable appointments to be made to the judiciary;
  9. Adopting measures to promote the equitable distribution of all areas of legal work effectively and meaningfully, to eliminate barriers of entry and provide equal opportunities by empowering black legal practitioners especially persons from designated categories through ensuring equal participation in the economic opportunities within the legal sector;
  10. Ensuring and enhancing demographic representativity with respect to ownership, management, control, and employment within legal practices;
  11. Creating conditions conducive to ensuring that providers of legal services are able to establish, manage, and build sustainable practices; and
  12. Creating an enabling environment to reflect the diversity of our society and to ensure the promotion of equality and the prevention of discrimination.

UNIQUE FEATURES AND STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES OF THE LSC

a. The LSC is premised on the recognition that a B-BBEE measurement framework in the legal sector is necessary to address transformation as a whole, B-BBEE in general, and the promotion of black persons as well as the need for a significant increase in the fair and equitable procurement of specialised areas of law by black practitioners from both the private and public sectors.

b. The LSC therefore seeks to ensure that the continuing adverse consequences of past discriminatory practices for black practitioners are addressed by providing for certain measures, including the following:

i.  seeking to achieve a substantial, meaningful, and accelerated change in the racial and gender composition of ownership, control, and management of legal practices in the legal services sector;
ii. promoting employment patterns in the sector that adhere to the principles of non-racialism and non-sexism by addressing the underrepresentation of black practitioners in many LSMEs;
iii.    addressing the shortage and lack of relevant skills and increasing the skills pipeline to accelerate the advancement of black legal practitioners, black women legal practitioners, and practitioners with disabilities, including legal internships, learnerships, employment of candidate attorneys and pupils with specific reference to legal technical and management skills;
iv. increasing the procurement of legal services from the private and public sectors by LSMEs that are at least 50% black-owned and/or 25% black women-owned within 5 years;
v.  enhancing enterprise and supplier development in the core value chain of the legal services that leads to sustainable empowerment of qualifying supplier development beneficiaries in the legal services sector;
vi. contributing to the creation of sustainable LSMEs that are majority or wholly owned by black legal professionals through effective enterprise and supplier development initiatives;
vii.    increasing preferential procurement spend on LSMEs that contribute to local employment creation through the investment in various forms of community projects that contribute to employment opportunities;
viii.   by increasing ongoing qualitative and quantitative methods for monitoring and evaluating the progress towards realising the goals of this LSC and B-BBEE in general and thereby contributing to measures of eradicating fronting and other mechanisms for circumventing such goals;
ix. promoting access to quality legal services, through pro bono legal services to rural and under-resourced communities and individuals; and 
x.  ensuring reporting to the Charter Council to monitor the progress of LSMEs toward implementing the provisions of B-BBEE as reflected in this LSC.

Future articles will discuss specific Scorecards in more detail.

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