Africa Legal and the University of Cape Town’s Law Faculty’s Law@workprogramme are to produce 10 courses for lawyers which will be accessible online and across Africa.

The courses, which include insights on how to use block chain and artificial intelligence in legal practise, will be rolled out over the next two years.

The announcement, made this week follows this year’s successful collaboration on the pilot, 'Practical Corporate Governance for the Modern African Lawyer'.

Wendy Bampton, Africa Legal’s Chief Operations Officer, said the collaboration with Law@work would centre on professional development, particularly in new areas of law.

“The goal, always, is to encourage a higher standard of practise and encourage lawyers in different countries to work together.” 

Irena Wasserfall from Law@work said the cost to the learner would be contained to make it accessible and affordable. All courses would be accessed online to avoid travel or additional costs.

“Legal tech and new law will be core to our development programme equipping junior and senior legal professionals alike for a changing industry,” she said.

Bampton said that, like the pilot, the courses would be practical, encouraging the learner to immediately apply principles, whatever their role or level.

This practicality was what drew the most kudos from all those enrolled for the pilot, she said.

Feedback included comments like:

•       “I am currently assisting an international client with improving the corporate governance processes of its South African operations and found that this course has enabled me to think about corporate governance in new ways.”
•       “I really enjoyed it so much that I kept doing and doing and doing the modules till I reached the end without noticing it.”
•       "The course was great. I’m still in the office printing out all the articles for my file."

Irena said that, for UCT, working with Africa Legal provided an opportunity to deliver training outside of South Africa at a price people based in other African countries could afford.

“Legal professionals are so busy developing business and running their practices they often do not have the time or money to dedicate to longer term training programmes. Building a portfolio of courses with Africa Legal enables us to work with a pan African legal community to deliver what the market needs rather that what has been traditionally taught.”

Bampton said that production, as before, would be in Cape Town with UCT lecturers delivering the courses alongside industry experts.

To register your interest for the next programme of click here.

To tell us what courses you would like Law@work and Africa Legal to develop take our short survey here.

To purchase a seat on the first course ‘Practical corporate governance for the modern African Lawyer’ please click here.  The course is self paced and remains open.