University of the Witwatersrand
In line with its commitment to developing highly capable graduates who strive to contribute to a better and just world for all, the Wits School of Law took the bold step to offer the LLB only as a second undergraduate degree from 2015. This resulted in significant praise from most quarters.
It was a necessary step forced by the lack of success of students in the four-year LLB, as is the case at other South African universities.
The Wits School of Law also announced that it would offer a compulsory course in professional ethics and emphasise writing in general and legal writing in particular. The course in ethics will be offered in 2017.
We have invested in reinvigorating our writing centre to create a generation of articulate, empowered law students. This holistic approach is already showing meaningful impact.
The Council for Higher Education recently approved the qualification standard for the LLB degree for all South African law schools. Its implementation will shake up law schools and will demand agility in adapting how we teach as much as what we teach. The LLB graduate, we read, “is proficient in reading, writing, comprehension and speaking in a professional capacity, to a specialist and non-specialist alike”.
This is not about mere remedial steps to bridge the articulation gap between high school and university. Nor is it about the subtle paternalism of labeling students from under-resourced schools as being “at risk” and needing “development”.
It is not even limited to well-designed courses to induct students into the codes of academic discourse. This is about rethinking the ways in which we will systematically accompany our students to build their capacities over the course of the degree.
This is a bold step forward because language is the tool of all lawyers, everywhere. Lawyers used to take payment by the weight of their court papers, at least in some countries. Now, the world over, we earn for the weight of our words: for the experience behind them and the analysis within them; for their clarity and capacity to persuade, to defend and to uphold. This is a reality that unites academics with practising lawyers, attorneys and advocates alike.
Reading carefully, thinking critically and writing clearly are not just abstract skills. They must be applied and refined in the matrix of practice. The Wits School of Law has one of the oldest law clinics in the country where students interview clients and respond to their legal issues. They open files on the cases and litigate under the guidance of an attorney. This permits them to apply the law they learnt in a law firm. No student can graduate with a law degree from the Wits Law School without having completed this clinical legal education.
The Centre for Applied Legal Studies has earned an international reputation for the cutting edge research and litigation it has undertaken since 1978. It is currently engaged in projects focussing on business and human rights, basic services, the environment, gender issues and the rule of law. It is also an accredited law clinic which, like the Wits Law Clinic, trains candidate attorneys for admission.
The Mandela Institute conducts legal and policy research and offers basic and advanced short courses in different areas of global economic law, including corporate governance, law and sustainability, mining law, competition law, international trade and investment law, intellectual property law, banking and finance services regulation, telecommunications law, international dispute resolution and global business transactions and regulation. The Institute takes a transformative and African perspective on its areas of work with a view to enabling critical engagement with the global economic legal order.
Especially in our context, with a history of laws that veiled their tyranny behind words of power and authority, clarity is not just about good usage or eloquence. Ethics are nothing if not lived.
Social justice cannot remain a lofty ideal but must be a process to which each lawyer has an opportunity and responsibility to contribute each day. These are the imperatives for the transparency, accessibility and democratisation of the law and legal systems of this country.
As one of the premier schools on the continent, the Wits School of Law is well-placed to empower legal experts who will make a real difference in the world today and who will lay the groundwork to create a more just world for future generations.