LETTER: Law Society′s new voting method is reckless and irrational
The legal fraternity is repeating the virtue-signalling mistake that business made with BEE
By effecting the bizarre discriminatory voting method for the Legal Practice Council (which will probably be found unlawful), the Law Society is making the same mistake that business made over aspects of BEE when it chased virtue points by endorsing selection by race, instead of fighting the laws tooth and nail on the grounds that the measures were racially discriminatory and would not produce the intended outcome. The Law Society’s understanding is that the composition of the council should recognise the racial and gender composition of SA, ignoring the phrase in the Legal Practices Act, “as far as practicable”, which suggests the council should rather concentrate on the racial and gender composition of its practitioners, not the population at large. Not doing so is reckless and irrational. The society’s co-chairs’ supporting argument in the letter Quotas are temporary (October 4) is weak and muddled. Its argument for legal practitioners to “support efforts intended to transform t...
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