As DLA Piper's member firm in South Africa, we assist the
Southern African Litigation Centre (a joint venture of DLA Piper, the Open
Society Initiative and the International Bar Association), which develops legal
resources for human rights litigators in countries of Southern Africa, outside
South Africa. We will ourselves take on human rights litigation or work where
there are cogent reasons to do so and we have the resources to service the
need.
We continue to be active in practical legal training in
commercial work for black lawyers through the Black Lawyers Association (with
the American Bar Association) and through the Law Society (with the Irish Law
Society). We will also be participating in the mentorship programme being
established by the Law Society for black practitioners in the corporate and
commercial field.
We are more generally involved in public interest law through
the distribution of applications for help by Probono.Org, public interest law
clearing house established to serve this function by the major firms in
Johannesburg, the organisational overheads of which are sponsored by Atlantic
Philanthropies.
We have a twinning arrangement with the Legal Resources Centre
(LRC), the largest national public interest legal services NGO, in which we
provide professional services in areas that are not part of the LRC's service
offering, including corporate structuring and corporate law, commercial law and
property law.
