Read Now A considered reply to a ‘Plight of a Black Law Graduate’ who spent unlucky years seeking after articles of clerkship.: An Analysis Kindle
A considered reply to a ‘Plight of a Black Law Graduate’ who spent unlucky years seeking after articles of clerkship.Law is a difficult profession. It requires an excellent memory, near perfect comprehension skills, an ability to deal with clients and opponents, and a good knowledge of several languages, and at the very least, a passing knowledge of English and Afrikaans, the languages most cases are written in, and in which the courts conduct their business.South Africa has 11 official languages, practically speaking, this means that anyone can go to court and have their testimony translated into English or Afrikaans from these languages. However, the languages of the courts in South Africa are only the two aforementioned tongues.In Britain, court was conducted in Norman French for many years. It is where the term attorney (appointed) comes from, and it also largely limited the profession to the upper classes who could speak Norman. You might have heard the classic ‘ey’ sound with which the British pronounce French words. This comes from Norman French. While conducting trials in French, the British courts would use Latin as the language of record. Most legal concepts have thus been rendered in multiple languages: Peace and quiet; Breaking and Entering; and so forth.In South Africa, Latin, Dutch, Afrikaans and English, are the essential languages of legal discourse. While I write, I have a trilingual legal dictionary sitting next to me. It is that important to be prepared.A misplaced comma can and has cost millions of dollars in legal cases, and contract work. A misspelling in a will or legal letter can be catastrophic. Law is a profession which takes no prisoners, and which vastly favours suitors from the upper class, and with elite private school education and accents. I, like many in my profession, speak Cultivated South African English, or Received South African English, a dialect almost identical to the Received English spoken by the British nobility. It is a widely-understood accent, and research shows that speaking clearly and being easy to understand, makes people believe you are more likely to be telling the truth.I spend tens of thousands of Rands a year on up to date legal literature, precedents and so forth, and I have a wardrobe including bespoke suits of the required type for court, and robes which are quite literally the funeral wear of the semi-wealthy of the Holy Roman Empire. If I make an error, I have sworn an oath, and thus can be sued for my negligence, as can my firm. Law takes no prisoners as a profession. It has to be so....
