By Tshenolo Masha.
At this year’s event, convened by the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) ProBono.Org organised a plenary session on Transformation, both in the public interest law sector and the profession as a whole.
The panellists were Lisa Chamberlain (CALS), advocate Amelia Rawhani (Johannesburg Bar), Silomo Khumalo (Black Workers Forum), Mari van Wyk (Lexis Nexis) and Khululilwe Ntombi Bhengu (former ProBono.Org intern currently serving articles at SERI).The panel was facilitated by Tshenolo Masha of ProBono.Org.
The ojectives of the session were to look back on what has been achieved and some of the challenges within the public interest law sector and also to get an understanding of how the question of transformation is addressed by the legal profession as a whole.
The panellists covered aspects such as:
- How transformation affects the sustainability and funding of organisations
- A demographic overview of the profession in terms of race and gender (outlined in the Lexis Nexis 2016 survey)
- How the lack of real transformation hinders young black female lawyers.
The session made it clear that a huge amount of work needs to be done to gain real transformation. We will be engaging young professionals to plan how active, progressive results can be achieved.