{"id":361,"date":"2006-12-06T19:58:09","date_gmt":"2006-12-06T23:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2006\/12\/06\/inspiration-from-south-africa\/"},"modified":"2006-12-07T10:17:55","modified_gmt":"2006-12-07T14:17:55","slug":"inspiration-from-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2006\/12\/06\/inspiration-from-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"inspiration from South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0A recent article makes the pro bono<\/em> approach of South Africa’s biggest law firm look pretty good, and another suggests we can learn from the structure of employment law\u00a0enforcement in the South African judicial system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"SouthAfrica\"\u00a0\u00a0 According to today’s West Virginia Record,<\/em> a recent trip\u00a0to South Africa “surprised a couple of Charleston attorneys with a few ideas on how to operate a legal system smoothly.”\u00a0 (“Firm wowed by South African trip<\/a>,” Dec. 6, 2006)\u00a0 The article notes:<\/p>\n

Ironically, one of those ideas was keeping the attorneys out of it as long as possible.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Roger Forman and Jason Huber, partners in the firm Forman & Huber<\/a>, traveled with the group People to People, in an effort to learn about the country’s employment law.\u00a0\u00a0 Forman discovered that, just twelve years after the founding of a new, post-apartheid\u00a0constitution, South Africa has shown “mediation can be extremely effective when dealing with employment cases.”\u00a0 The Record<\/em> continues, quoting Forman:<\/p>\n

“I like the idea of mediation and arbitration as the first place you have to go, because the lawyers are not permitted in that. And they said 95 percent of the disputes dissolve there. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He also stressed that the people are “taking active roles” in using the judiciary as a final check on the government.\u00a0 He noted, for example, that “he stopped to watch a pro se case where the litigant was ‘beating the heck’ out of the other side.”<\/p>\n

\"SouthAfricaN\"\u00a0\u00a0 Meanwhile, according to the latest edition of ProBono.netNews<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0 South Africa’s largest law firm,\u00a0Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0[domain name: problemsolved.co], is “Setting the Pro Bono Pace<\/a><\/em>” (Nov. 2006). \u00a0 The author of the piece is Lourens Ackermann, coordinator of\u00a0the ENS pro bono<\/em> program<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0According to Ackermann, the Cape Law Society, for the first time in South Africa, now requires that all of its members provide 24 hours of pro bono<\/em> services a year.\u00a0\u00a0 He notes that “this initiative has been met with varying degrees of enthusiasm,” but “No one has condemned it outright.”\u00a0 However, most firms are “sitting back and waiting for it to happen. But happen it won\u2019t, not without effort.”<\/p>\n

ENS has decided to “commit each of our attorneys to 32 hours per attorney per calendar year.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0More important, Ackerman asserts that ENS\u00a0believes it is\u00a0“building a model for pro bono<\/em> that is unique, in that:<\/p>\n