Business

Big changes for lawyers in South Africa – including compulsory community service and changes coming for pay

Staff Writer

 ·14 Aug 2023

The Department of Justice and Correctional Development has gazetted an amendment to regulations within the Legal Practice Act, outlining new rules for community service for lawyers in the country.

Under the new amendments, candidate legal practitioners and practising legal practitioners will now have to perform compulsory community service every year, with immediate effect (effective 11 August 2023).

Candidate practitioners will have to perform 8 hours of community service a year, while practising lawyers will be subject to 40 hours a year.

Generally, the following conditions apply:

• The hours can be performed intermittently or continuously;
• The services can be pro rata or pro bono;
• Any extra hours of community services worked can be carried forward as credit for the next calendar year.

The community service hours are slightly different for candidate and practising lawyers, however.

For candidate practitioners, the community service must be supervised by their principal or a person directed by their principal, and a pupil who renders community service must be supervised by their engaging advocate or a person directed by said advocate.

Candidate practitioners, once they have completed their practical vocational training, also need to submit a certificate confirming that the community service has been completed.

For practising lawyers, acting as a principal that supervises candidate practitioners also counts towards their own community service hours.

Other aspects of the field – such as “In forma pauperis” instructions from the High Court, lecturing or training – can also be considered community service hours, the department said.

Practicing lawyers also have to submit a signed certificate confirming the hours have been done to council.

In all aspects, however, all professional standards and codes of conduct need to be adhered by candidate and practicing lawyers when doing their community service hours.

Salary changes

In addition to the new compulsory community service hours, the Legal Practice Council called for public comments on minimum remuneration proposals for candidate attorneys undergoing practical vocational training and those in pupillage under the supervision of practising advocates.

For candidate attorneys, the council said that applying a uniform minimum remuneration is impractical due to the “diversity of law firms taking on candidate legal practitioners in different areas around the country”.

Setting a minimum would deter firms in rural areas, for example, from taking on and training more candidates.

As such, the council is proposing a split between rural and urban minimums:

For pupils undergoing vocational training with an advocate, the council believes that they should be remunerated – but “appreciates that they are not employed by their supervisors”, and that imposing an obligation on a supervisor to remunerate a pupil will discourage many advocates from becoming a supervisor.

“The council therefore proposes that a levy be imposed on practising advocates to establish a fund from which pupils will be remunerated,” it said.

The Council proposes that:

• Senior counsel pays a once-off levy of R8,400 per year, or R700 per month; and
• Junior counsel of 10 years standing and more pays a once-off levy of R4,800 per year or R400 per month.

If this proposal is implemented, a pupil undergoing practical vocational training would be entitled to minimum remuneration of R96,000 a year or R8,000 a month.

Read: This is how much money lawyers get paid in South Africa