Mail & Guardian Reporter
THE legal profession is showing signs of becoming caught up in the stampede for transparency and openness.
The Transvaal Law Society — which like all provincial law societies is currently trying to vault several bureaucratic hurdles to modernise its name — is planning to ask its members in November to vote on whether disciplinary hearings of reprobate attorneys should be held in public.
The idea got the thumbs-down last year, but Transvaal Law Society president Esme du Plessis is confident that a simplified motion will be passed.
At the moment the Transvaal and the Orange Free State societies are languishing in the opaque old South Africa, while both the Cape and the Natal societies have opened their hearings to the public.
But if the Transvaal Law Society gets its way, journalists will not be able to attend a hearing for a couple of hours, jot down the juicy details of how an attorney defrauded his clients, and file a front- page story. The society is keen to follow Natal’s decision to allow journalists to report — provided they attend the entire hearing. This, says Du Plessis, will prevent any unbalanced reporting.
Attorneys and advocates polled about the Transvaal society’s looming exit from the dark ages said it was a good idea.
One advocate said he hoped the move would encourage attorneys facing charges of misconduct to actually attend the hearings. He said in a few instances attorneys had got off to a bad start in defending their behaviour by forgetting to turn up.