Justice officials aim to transform legal profession

The justice department wants to use the financial muscle of the state to help transform the legal profession. The department was in the process of transforming the state’s legal services to ensure a fair, nondiscriminatory distribution of briefs, Justice Minister Michael Masutha said in Parliament on Thursday. The way in which black attorneys and advocates — particularly black females — are marginalised when it comes to the assignment of briefs has concerned black professionals and the minister. Large corporates and the government have failed in this regard. Dumisa Ntsebeza, who chairs Advocates for Transformation, raised the issue recently when he said there was not a single black advocate in the Constitutional Court in the case involving the social grants payment system. "Nearly 23 years into our democracy, we still find ourselves in a situation where white senior counsels and even their junior counterparts are the first choice of corporate SA, NGOs [nongovernment organisations] a...

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