Partner Profile – SABA

The South African Bar Association is a voluntary national bar association with its head office stationed in the economic hub of South Africa, Johannesburg, Gauteng. The South African Bar Association’s members consist of referral advocates registered with the South African Legal Practice Council that hail from all nine provinces in South Africa. The South African Bar Association aggressively pursues the ideal of unifying the fragmented Bar in South Africa with a common goal to enhance professional legal services within the South African legal fraternity.

As part of its ideals, the Bar focuses on a sevenfold mission to transform the legal profession in South Africa by:

• Facilitating initiatives aimed at unifying the fragmented bars in South Africa under one body, the South African Bar Association.
• Promoting access of female advocates into the profession and pursuing the elimination of racially and gender skewed briefing patterns.
• Removing restrictions pertaining to location and manner in which chambers are held and to encourage advocates to practice from premises and locations suitable for practice.
• Investing in the ongoing training and development of junior advocates so as to maintain the standards of excellence that an advocate’s practice demands.
• Facilitating and optimising opportunities aimed at making legal practice more accessible and affordable for all advocates.
• Reducing bar subscriptions for all advocates in general and junior advocates in particular.
• Addressing anti-competitive practices, which result in the briefing of advocates of particular associations exclusively at the expense of other advocates.