Unpacking the role of paralegal practitioners
LEGAL EAGLES: Delegates who attended the recent inaugural Regional Paralegal Colloquium at the Cape Town Hotel School
Thursday, 08 May 2014
CPUT has registered a range of academic programmes pertaining to the training of paralegal practitioners with the South African Qualifications Authority.
The programmes to be offered will range from a General Certificate up to a Doctoral qualification.
Last week, the Unit for Applied Law hosted the first-ever regional colloquium at the Cape Town Hotel School under the theme: “The transformation of the legal profession: A paralegal perspective”.
Delivering the keynote address, Ashraf Mohamed of the Cape Law Society said paralegal practitioners can be the backbone of the justice system and that legal training should be about social justice.
He says paralegal training at universities should include the taking of statements and provision of free legal advice to members of the community.
Seth Mnguni, Chairperson of the Association of Community Advice Officers of South Africa, say community-based paralegal practitioners use sets of facts to give their communities access to effective justice without litigation.
Mnguni says paralegal practitioners are trained to deal with prevalent problems in their communities in an unintimidating manner as they spoke the local languages.
The delegates discussed the role of paralegal practitioners as outlined in Chapter 4 of the Draft Legal Practice Bill of 2009.
Written by Kwanele Butana
Email: butanak@cput.ac.za
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