A lawyer’s duty must reach beyond the letter of the law, says Professor Christof Heyns, dean of the faculty of law at the University of Pretoria. But he believes students are not prepared for this because the education system is teaching law without context.
‘Pursuing and protecting the rule of law is the business of lawyers, because it is an essential part of any attempt to ensure that our society will meet the needs of our people and allow them to flourish. To meet this challenge, it is not enough just to ensure that we have a technically sound and advanced legal system on the books. The law has to be applied by people — by lawyers — who are able to persuade society of the merits of their approach,” says Heyns.
‘We need to build a society in which there is a culture of taking rights and obligations seriously; where all citizens participate in an open and vigorous debate about the kind of society we want to be.”
But Heyns says that the legal education system is not responding to these challenges. The first setback, he says, was the change in 1998 from a five-year LLB to a four-year LLB.
‘This was a mistake. As a result of this change many law students focus almost exclusively on black-letter law. There is no time and no room left for students to be exposed to other courses that will provide them with more insight into the society in which they will practise — they study law without context.
‘Moreover, there is hardly enough time even for courses of which the content is strictly law. We need to nurture and develop the analytical faculties of our students,” he stresses.
He believes students should study for a BCom or a BA degree first, before undertaking a LLB, and to take five years in the process.
Heyns adds that the issues of literary, numeracy and advocacy skills need addressing. ‘You simply cannot be a good lawyer if you cannot write and read well, and do basic math.”
‘The point of the rule of law is that it allows people to pursue their own dreams within a stable and enabling framework. This is what I believe our profession as lawyers is ultimately about: to create the framework within which dreams can come true, and it starts with good education,” says Heyns.