The Legal Practice Bill is currently before Parliament’s Justice Committee. The government would like to see a unified regulator for the legal profession, with one body regulating both advocates and attorneys. The legal profession would like to see those bodies remain independent and separate. The motivation for fusing them is apparently for the purposes of transformation.

There is no doubt that this is the type of legislation, affecting the very professionals who specialise in going to court, that is going to be challenged in the Constitutional Court and so it may well be some time before there is a Legal Practice Bill in place. Worryingly, there are also suggestions that legal fees should be regulated, but not for big companies whose work is largely done by corporate law firms but for other individuals. I am not sure how that is going to help access to justice, or indeed an individual, who for example litigates against a company who will now be represented by attorneys who charge a lesser rate than the companies’ attorneys charge. In a situation like that one would not be surprised if a number of the top litigators then join big companies and litigate only for the companies against the more junior and less experienced attorneys who will then represent individuals only, at a lower amount laid down by the government. It certainly does not seem to make sense and one wonders how that can possibly be constitutional – that one legal fee will relate to corporate entities and another legal fee will relate to ordinary people and those who represent ordinary people will be at a disadvantaged in terms of what they can earn and charge, compared to those who represent companies. It will certainly make for unequal litigation.