The Law Society AGM is this weekend and takes place at Sun City.  It is a meeting I have been going to for more than a decade, and it certainly has livened up in recent years.  Members of the Law Society of the Northern Provinces are particularly vociferous and active and normally there is much heated debate during the meeting on whatever the contentious issues of that year are.  

There have certainly been a number of important votes over the years and this year, for example, a draft set of Uniform Rules will be put before the members.   Rules don’t deal with all issues, because there are certainly topics which are still being dealt with in the Competition Commission, but otherwise they constitute a revamp of the rules of the Law Society.  For the first time it is likely that South African lawyers will have one set of Uniform Rules for the whole country because up until now, each Law Society has had its own rules, and once all Law Societies have endorsed the new rules, they will be adopted as national rules.  That will certainly make it easier for a lawyer who is advising a client on a potential complaint against another lawyer, because previously you had to go and look up the rules of the different Law Societies which have differed substantially, at certain times, even allowing for example practices that may be illegal and lead to a striking off in another Province, but being perfectly permissible in that particular area.