B-BBEE: LEGAL SECTOR CODE OF GOOD PRACTICE FINALISED

The National Assembly’s Justice & Constitutional Development Committee has issued a media statement welcoming the finalisation of a broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) code of good practice for the legal sector. The statement draws from a Department of Trade, Industry & Competition press release posted on X and Politicsweb – but at the time of writing yet to be published on its website. Neither had the new code been gazetted.

Announcing its approval by Trade, Industry & Competition Minister, Parks Tau, the press release is quoted verbatim in an SAnews article and provides some information on targets set for legal sector transformation under the B-BBEE Act, 2003. These are:

  • ‘an ownership target of 50% and black women ownership of 25% over 5 years’
  • ‘a management control (executive and board participation) target of 50% representation of black practitioners and a target of 25% for black women practitioners, particularly as equity partners and associates’
  • ‘a skills development target of 3.5% expenditure on training programmes for black candidates’, and
  • ‘a procurement target of 60% by the private sector … (with) a target of 80 % to be achieved through the specialised procurement scorecard applicable to the public sector’.

According to SAnews, the code’s skills development target seeks to ‘ensure training in specialised skills for black legal practitioners, candidate legal practitioners and black junior advocates … (focusing on) black women, black youth, black people with disabilities and black people from rural areas’.

Regarding the code’s procurement targets, SAnews notes that these are expected to ‘ensure fair and equitable access to specialised areas of law and complex matters when the state procures legal services from black legal sector measured entities … and ensure the(ir) sustainability’.

The code was released in draft form in July 2022 for public comment.

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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