young legal eagles spreading their wings 
24 June 2008

A top international law firm descended on the University of Cape Town’s law faculty recently to recruit the cream of graduates at starting salaries reportedly upwards of $160000 a year.

Senior attorneys say newly qualified lawyers cannot hope to earn this kind of money in SA.  The number of candidates for the most recent qualified lawyers transfer test in Pretoria,  a prerequisite for lawyers from abroad to practise in England and Wales was three times that of the previous sitting.

“We are seeing more and more of our brightest legal talent moving abroad, and this is a worrying trend for the profession and for the country,” says Raj Daya, CEO of the Law Society of SA (LSSA).  SA has about 17800 practising attorneys, 3000 advocates and a further 3000 candidate attorneys at law firms and Legal Aid Board justice centres.  Nic Swart, LSSA director of Legal Education and Development, says there are only 9000 law firms in SA, most of them small or sole practitioners, and many lack basic business skills. Swart says if the legal profession does not improve its skills, it stands to lose its exclusivity in conveyancing and perhaps even some civil matters.

That would put SA’s legal profession in the same boat as those of many countries where paralegals are permitted to compete with lawyers in certain areas.  Werksmans chairman Des Williams says law firms use a variety of strategies to address the crisis. Most involve traditional techniques such as aggressively recruiting candidate attorneys, opening doors for women and minority attorneys, and raising salaries.

“In SA, if a young lawyer does not make it to partner or director level within six years after qualifying, he or she will move on. This is a function of the skills shortage,” Williams says.   In the UK or Australia, it takes nine to 11 years to make it to partner level. Williams says South African law firms cannot possibly match the salaries paid in New York and London. “However, lawyers in SA need to keep focused on the opportunities that are offered. Experience is key,” he says.

He says that the large law firms have well-developed in-house training programmes not available to smaller firms.  “We have to address the issue of academic standards of candidates entering the legal profession. There is a lack of specialist training in areas such as intellectual property, mergers and acquisitions, litigation and property law at some academic institutions.”

As SA becomes a more sophisticated society, it is becoming harder for the generalist to survive, Swart says.  This is creating a divide between large and small law firms. One way around this is to foster partnership and mentorship programmes between large and small firms, where the smaller practices are brought in as part of project teams to gain knowledge of specialised legal disciplines.

“Large law firms already have black economic empowerment (BEE) profiles, but in terms of the BEE scorecard, they can earn extra points by partnering or mentoring smaller black-owned firms,” Swart says. “The LSSA is attempting to promote partnerships between large and small firms, but the response so far has been disappointing.”

Williams says that Werkmans is keen to make its  in-house training programme available to some of the smaller firms. “We are thinking along the lines of opening the sessions to one or two of their candidate attorneys,” he says.  The firm also has other ideas on the sharing of knowledge with smaller practices.  Williams says exchange programmes can give young lawyers the opportunity to work overseas for a year or two and then return home.

Hofmeyr chairman Dines Gihwala says the quality of life, the high cost of living and the fact that labour laws are quite unlike SA’s should be borne in mind by those thinking of moving to another country.

But it is not all doom and gloom. Deneys Reitz managing partner Patrick Bracher says that overseas experience places a lawyer in good standing but lawyers who decide to stay overseas in countries such as the UK will not advance as quickly as they would if they stayed in SA.

Sanchia Temkin, www.businessday.co.za