Black Business Council accuses top law firms of resisting transformation over Legal Sector Code challenge

The Black Business Council (BBC) has thrown its weight behind the Legal Sector Code of Good Practice (LSC), which is at the centre of a legal challenge brought by several of South Africa’s largest corporate law firms.

The dispute has reignited debate over how transformation in the legal profession should be implemented after the introduction of the revised LSC under the broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) Act in September 2024.

The code introduces sector-specific transformation requirements for legal practitioners, including ownership targets, procurement obligations and revised scoring mechanisms aimed at reshaping the demographics of the legal profession. 

The BBC said it fully supported the LSC and had aligned itself with organisations defending it in the matter under way in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, including the Black Lawyers Association, Black Conveyancers Association, National Association of Democratic Lawyers, Advocates for Transformation, African Legal Professionals Association, Basadi Ba Molao Education and Training Services, the General Council of the Bar of South Africa, the Pan African Bar Association of South Africa, the South African Women Lawyers Association and the Legal Practice Council, as well as the departments of trade, industry and competition and justice and constitutional development.

The legal challenge involves Bowmans, Webber Wentzel and Werksmans, which have intervened in the legal proceedings initiated by Deneys, formerly Norton Rose Fulbright, to review the LSC.

The firms say they support transformation in the legal sector but argue that aspects of the framework are impractical, structurally flawed and could undermine long-term empowerment objectives. The trade union, Solidarity, is also opposing the LSC in a separate case that is being heard at the same time.

In a recent joint statement, Bowmans, Webber Wentzel and Werksmans, said a sector-specific code must be “workable and sustainable” and based on sound empirical evidence. They warned that certain provisions risked unintended consequences for both the legal profession and the broader economy.

The firms argue that the code fails to sufficiently account for the operational realities of large corporate law firms, which function both as regulated professional partnerships and complex commercial businesses.

One of their primary concerns relates to ownership targets. Under the LSC, large firms are expected to reach 50% black ownership within five years. 

The firms argue that the timeline does not adequately reflect how law firm partnerships operate, noting that only practising lawyers may become equity partners and that the process typically takes a decade or more.

They say equity partners often remain in firms until retirement and are personally liable for firm debt, making rapid ownership restructuring difficult even where firms are committed to transformation.

The firms also object to procurement requirements obliging firms to allocate 60% of advocate spend to black advocates by year five. They argue that advocate fees are generally client-directed disbursements rather than procurement decisions controlled by firms themselves.

Clients frequently decide which advocates should be briefed, while attorneys have ethical obligations to provide objective legal advice when recommending counsel. The firms argue that linking those decisions to B-BBEE scoring could create professional complications distinct from ordinary procurement decisions involving suppliers such as landlords or IT providers.

The firms have also criticised the removal of socio-economic development from the scorecard, despite its inclusion under the generic B-BBEE framework. They argue that bursaries, pro bono legal work and community legal programmes have played a significant role in expanding access to the profession and advancing broad-based empowerment.

Further concerns relate to the treatment of procurement from black-owned suppliers outside the legal profession. The firms say the code places insufficient emphasis on spending directed towards black-owned businesses in sectors such as technology, facilities management and legal services support.

The firms additionally argue that the LSC focuses too narrowly on legal practitioners while excluding black professionals in fields such as finance, human resources, IT and marketing from management-control calculations, despite their role in firm leadership and operations.

In defending their record on transformation, the firms pointed to existing B-BBEE credentials and internal demographic shifts achieved under the generic codes.

Bowmans said it had maintained black ownership levels between 24.7% and 28.6% over the past decade, trained more than 356 black candidate attorneys in the past five years and awarded more than 20 bursaries to black students in 2024 alone.

Webber Wentzel said black partners had increased from 25% in 2019 to 37% in 2025, while 55% of its lawyers were now black — an increase of 81% over the past decade. The firm said it had trained 178 black candidate attorneys over the past five years and spent more than R6.7 million on bursaries.

Werksmans said black partner representation had risen from 20% in 2019 to 30.71% in 2025. The firm said it had spent more than R45m on black-owned suppliers and more than R17m on black professional development in 2024, while black junior lawyers now accounted for 75% of junior legal staff.

They also warned that the revised framework could affect investor confidence by destabilising large commercial firms that serviced foreign direct investment and cross-border transactions.

“These firms, aligned to the international corporate law firm model, create confidence for potential foreign investors who rely on independent, sophisticated local law firms of a scale and size which they are used to in their home jurisdictions,” the joint statement said.

The BBC, however, rejected the firms’ arguments, saying the legal challenge risked weakening a framework specifically designed to expand access for black legal practitioners to high-value legal work and address historical imbalances in the profession. 

In a strongly-worded statement, the organisation described the applicants as “anti-transformation white law firms” seeking to overturn a policy central to transformation in the legal sector.

The firms, it said, “effectively oppose the right of black legal practitioners to equal treatment and want to continue monopolising lucrative legal work”.

The organisation also argued that the LSC was intended to provide black lawyers with greater access to quality legal work and fulfil constitutional obligations aimed at addressing the legacy of exclusion in the profession.

The BBC further welcomed the support Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition Parks Tau and Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Mmamoloko Kubayi had shown for the continued implementation of the code.