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LEGAL SECTOR: DEPUTY MINISTER DRAWS ATTENTION TO B-BBEE CODE
- 28 May 2025
- Justice & Constitutional Development
- SA Legal Academy
In the context of the Department of Justice & Constitutional Development’s policy on the outsourcing of state legal work and associated briefings, Deputy Minister Andries Nel recently drew attention to certain elements of the legal sector broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) code of good practice expressly intended to support the policy.
The code was gazetted in September 2024, when it came into force s SA Legal Academy reported at the time. The department’s policy on outsourcing state legal work received Cabinet approval in November 2022 as part of a broader state litigation strategy. According to a statement on the Cabinet meeting concerned, the policy itself seeks to introduce ‘an element of fairness and drive the transformational allocation of litigation services that cannot be performed internally’.
Addressing the Black Lawyers Association’s 2025 national general meeting, the Deputy Minister focused on:
- the code’s turnover thresholds (which are used to classify legal practices and determine their B-BBEE compliance obligations)
- community service, and
- the establishment of a legal sector transformation fund (intended to provide financial support to black legal practitioners and promote transformation across the sector).
Regarding the link between annual turnover and B-BBEE requirements, the Deputy Minister noted that:
- law firms with an annual revenue of up to R5m (for attorneys) and R3m (for advocates) are considered exempted legal enterprises
- law firms with an annual revenue of between R5m and R25m for attorneys and between R3m and R15m for advocates are classified as qualifying small enterprises subject to B-BBEE measurement but benefitting from simplified scorecards and requirements, and that
- law firms with an annual revenue exceeding R25m for attorneys and advocates R15m for advocates are considered large entities, required to comply fully with all elements of the code’s scorecard (including ownership, management control, skills development, and enterprise and supplier development).
On the issue of community service, according to the official version of the Deputy Minister’s address his department is ‘currently considering a possible increase in the jurisdiction amount of R20 000’. However, the context of this observation is not clear. In force since August 2023, the community service regulations make no reference to monetary value or ‘jurisdiction amount’. They take the form of an amendment to regulations gazetted in October 2018 under the 2014 Legal Practice Act.
- Deputy Minister’s speech
- SA Legal Academy report on community service regulations
- legal sector B-BBEE code
- November 2022 Cabinet media statement
Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch
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