Hon Chair, the legal profession in this country remains an unlevel and nonuniform playing field. It can be said that the profession has had it too good for too long. From the exorbitant legal fees charged by senior counsel and established law firms to the nonco-operation of some law societies, we see lawyers protected at client expense. With senior counsel charging anywhere between R20 000 and R50 000 per day, and this excludes the daily fee for the instructing attorney, we see adequate legal redress beyond the grasp of all except the very wealthy in our society. We need to level the playing field.
This Bill is a necessary ad hoc measure and will bring urgent relief through the regulatory framework to citizens who have been the victims of unprofessional conduct by unscrupulous attorneys who are registered and being protected from censure and sanction in the former Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei, TBVC states. The Law Society of Bophuthatswana is a particular case in point.
The Bill will also regulate and address disparities in relation to attorneys and candidate attorneys in the territories comprising the former TBVC republics. When you have a candidate attorney who is not even required to undergo practical legal training as part of his or her articles of clerkship, you are inviting disaster, the victims being the clients that these candidate attorneys represent in our courts and ultimately the candidate attorneys themselves, for without a proper practical foundation in South African legal practice, one can never hope to build a successful career in law.
The IFP supports the Bill and the efforts of the department in addressing the rationalisation of the legal profession. Our legal profession must be able to be held to public account, scrutiny and sanction as it remains a field in which the ordinary citizen has little knowledge and is left largely at the mercy of his or her legal representatives. I thank you.