A new direction
‘Change and transformation in our country is far-reaching and its effects should be long lasting. In the legal profession we have but started the process,” says legal firm Bowman Gilfillan’s CE, Leon Kruger.
‘Although the direction is being indicated by the department of justice and constitutional development through the draft Legal Services Charter, as a firm we have engaged in our own process to establish a transformation charter for ourselves. This was undertaken in 2004 by 44 employees from all levels and representative groups over an intensive six-week period. Input on all the aspects of transformation was provided from experts, clients and alumni, and was followed by a six-day workshop, after which the BG charter was finalised and adopted.”
Kruger says that as CE he is continually in touch with human resources and staff in this regard. ‘To pay lip service to what we have formulated would be a meaningless waste and negate our goals, which is why we are continuing our consultation and monitoring of the process with all our staff. In fact, we are about to review and update our charter, setting new goals for the next three years.”
Of the goals and objectives set in the charter, human resource development and retention of staff rank high.
‘We took a hard look how we retain our people. With the firm being intensively knowledge based, this is a critical issue for any legal firm. The skills and experience acquired by a lawyer over, say, 25 years, cannot be replicated by a computer or any other means. So, while looking critically at the intake of candidate attorneys, which feeds the pipeline of partners, we also sought to address measures to retain the knowledge base available to us.
‘Going overseas is a huge drawcard for many young qualified attorneys. While it is a valuable learning experience, many don’t return and the investment in their skills development is lost,” explains Kruger.
‘We receive excellent students from our universities who are well educated, but not enough of them. And then a large percentage of them leave the profession in the first 10 years.
‘We believe that continuous improvement is good for transformation. Therefore we encourage all staff to think critically about improvement — in systems, processes, approaches. Transformation needs to be ingrained in all levels of business.
Bowman Gilfillan’s charter outlines eight goals, which include diversity, ownership and control, leadership, image and also clients and practice development, among others, with the belief that the end goals of transformation should be reflected in the means used to reach those goals.
Beyond the numbers
Aslam Moosajee, director at Deneys Reitz Attorneys, says empowerment goes beyond mere quotas. His firm has thus introduced a mentorship programme to ensure black lawyers are able to service all types of clients.
‘We are not focused on increasing the number of black employees in our company. Instead we have implemented a mentoring programme, which allows for the development of confidence, integrity and competence among all our lawyers. This emphasis on development allows black lawyers to attract complex work and to service large institutional clients, not just make up the number quota.”
‘The fact that the Legal Services Charter has not yet been finalised does not affect our continued effort to provide an appealing work environment that strives for diversity,” says Moosajee. ‘We encourage communication and feedback from our young attorneys as it assists in breaching the diversity gap.
‘As part of ensuring successful transformation, our black lawyers participate in the management of the firm, recruitment of staff, and the finance, marketing and education committees of the firm,” says Moosajee.
‘We strive to entrench transformation at the firm, within the wider legal profession and the larger South African society,” says Moosajee.
‘We spend a considerable amount of time and money investing in young lawyers, which is in line with our objective to transform larger South African society.”
Moosajee concludes that: ‘One challenge is for the Law Society of South Africa and the General Council of the Bar to undertake surveys and produce statistics with regard to the composition of its members, so that a meaningful assessment can be made of whether the targets set in the charter drafts are realistic.”
Retaining skills essential
‘Skills,” says Webber Wentzel senior partner David Lancaster, ‘are set to become a more compelling determinant in the transformation process than ever before.
‘And just having skills on board today does not mean a law firm can relax its hold, since the rate of associate attrition is very high, locally and internationally. A legal firm aims to attract the top people, with wide-ranging skills. There is now an ongoing competition for these people, especially with the overseas firms — who are also in need of excellent intellectual power — having stepped up their recruitment efforts in recent years.
‘We currently have no actual data regarding the numbers of graduates, also not those employed within and without the legal profession, so it is impossible to determine how many legally trained professionals are employed in commerce, or have left the country. Against this backdrop, transformation is not a static word in a law firm, but a daily challenge we are facing up to.”
Webber Wentzel Bowens is currently in negotiation to merge with a black-owned firm early next year, even though it has already attained good empowerment credentials.
Explains Lancaster: ‘Being BEE accredited and having the right range of skills gives the firm a competitive advantage over smaller black firms that are 100% empowered, but might not have the pool of skills we can offer clients.”
To retain its critical mass in terms of the firm’s pool of legal skills, Lancaster explains much has been done in terms of flexible arrangements. ‘These days young graduates entering the field no longer ascribe to the ‘career and nothing else’ ethic of the past, therefore we have to offer a career path with flexibility.”
Webber Wentzel Bowens, as one of its employment strategies, offers overseas secondments for those who are interested and the firm has just opened a branch in London, making overseas experience even more accessible to its staff.
‘Although law firms around the world are still male-dominated domains at partner level, we are changing faster than in the United Kingdom and even the United States. That cannot make us complacent, though.
‘We are actively seeking transformation since we believe embracing diversity is not just a South African phenomenon but a global one. And we have to remain globally competitive to be able to continue playing in the top league.”
A strategy to retain young professionals
Delays in the implementation of the Legal Services Charter have worked to the advantage of the industry, says Banzi Malinga, director of Hofmeyr Herbstein and Gihwala, because the sector has a chance to learn from other areas of industry in which charters have been introduced.
‘The legal profession is also in an advantaged position to learn from the experiences of other sectors and avoid mistakes that other sectors have made,” says Malinga
‘The best transformation strategy for the legal profession in general, and for established law firms in particular, remains investing time and money in the training and retention of young black professionals recruited as candidate attorneys and associates, with a view to them becoming equity partners one day. The strategy to retain these young professionals should be multidimensional and should also include addressing certain so-called ‘soft issues’ such as acknowledging and promoting diversity. This goes a long way in making professionals feel part of the law firm’s culture.
‘The challenges in the legal profession have changed — years ago the challenge was to produce black lawyers. Now we have black lawyers in abundance since the universities are churning out candidates in numbers. In my view, our challenge today is to have black lawyers have equal opportunities and practice in fields that ordinarily they wouldn’t practice in. These fields remain the fields of commercial law and intellectual property law. In my view, exposure to high-quality work and acquisition of skills to do that work is what drives a young lawyer — not owning a large chunk of an established law firm. This should be what defines transformation in the legal services sector.
‘It is therefore important that when established law firms appoint black candidate attorneys, emphasis should be put on skills development and exposure to work rather than displaying employment equity numbers and BEE compliance certificates. Not all of these candidates will rise within the ranks to achieve equity partnership, but change should indeed be seen in time.”
Malinga says the established law firms cannot also be everything to everyone in the quest for transforming the legal sector; the government and other stakeholders also have a significant role to play and this is indeed acknowledged in the draft Legal Services Charter.
‘All the stakeholders in the legal services sector agree that the development of the Legal Services Charter is long overdue. We cannot afford to have a legal profession which appears to have lost touch with the developments in the other sectors of the economy.”
Training is the key
‘Lawyers need to talk to each other to successfully effect transformation,” says City Serobe, director at Routledge Modise Attorneys, and a prominent player in the Black Lawyers Association.
‘We are, despite the competition between firms, all in the same boat, vying for the available skills of legal professionals. Because of this, training has become one of the most important issues in the process of managing a legal firm.
‘To this end we are in the process of establishing our own law school. Another starting point for us is a student bursary scheme, which we see as just the beginning.
‘There is no doubt that a person with two degrees is someone with the potential to be outstanding, and thus we are keen to create a platform and give the proper guidance to help some of these people along their career paths,” Serobe says.
‘The result will follow the input. We also believe in involving our most junior members in large transactions. This is the surest way to learn and shows our faith in our colleagues.”
Serobe concludes: ‘Most firms are in the process of getting the numbers right. But the pool of available, qualified legal professionals is not growing fast enough. The firms that are to succeed are the ones that are able to maintain their skills pool at the optimal level.”