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The Law Society of South Africa’s Legal Education and Development (LEAD) division will be offering legal-based training programmes for legal support staff and secretaries from disadvantaged backgrounds this year. This training is provided with the assistance of the Safety and Security Sector Education and Training Authority of which the legal profession is a part.

“The aim of the training is to give historically disadvantaged legal support staff peer guidance on how to perform the work they do in a law firm. As part of the training, support staff will learn, from a legal perspective, what their functions are, how to perform these functions, and how to manage the processes of a case as support staff,” says LEAD director Nic Swart.

He adds that the programme will focus on office administration, computer training, numeracy skills, as well as business English skills. There will be courses on litigation, debt collection, estates, conveyancing, book-keeping, client care, general office administration, English writing, calculations and computer literacy. The courses will teach practical job skills in conjunction with the underlying legal theory.

“Legal support staff are an important part of the legal team and, ideally, should display a mixture of analytical, administrative, managerial, research and communicative skills. Support staff need to be able to manage time effectively, research factual and legal issues, work efficiently as part of a team and communicate efficiently in speech and writing with a proficiency in computer and Internet skills,” Swart says.

The LEAD division will also be running a skills transfer project that will involve a mentorship programme for about 150 black attorneys. The selected attorneys will be mentored in specialised areas of the law. Attorneys apply- ing for the programme will be selected on an equity basis and will be selected mostly from small firms, says Swart. He explains that it is assumed that attorneys from larger firms have the training opportunities available to them and will more likely be exposed to specialised areas, and it is for this reason that the programme is being offered predominantly to smaller firms.

“We are going to try to spread the programme throughout the country so that attorneys from all provinces are represented, and we will be aiming to have 50% women in the programme.

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