Black Lawyers Association

Mission Statement

The BLA - LEC is dedicated to providing the legal community ans allied professionals with the most up to date and relevant information and techniques which are critical to the development of a professional competitive edge necessary for the realisation of equality of opportunity.

These goals will be achieved though high quality continuing legal education programmes.

OBJECTIVES

Its objectives are:

• to build the capacity of lawyers and expose black lawyers to areats of law from which they were previously excluded.
• to provide continuing legal education and services to the black community at large.
• to increase the number of black lawyers.

ACTIVITIES AND PROGRAMMES

Continuing Legal Education

This programme is aimed at primarily building capacity and enhancing the skills of lawyers and making the law accessible to all black and or historically disadvantaged legal practitioners in South Africa. Workshops and seminars in various aspects of the law are conducted for members of the legal profession and stakeholders.

Courses Offered:

•  Corporate Law
•  Corporate Tax
•  Energy and Petroleum Law
•  Mining Law, Insolvency Law
•  Pension Law
•  Sports Law
•  Entertainment Law
•  Public Private Partnership Law
•  Environmental Law
•  Mergers and Acquisitions; and
•  Polution Law

Previous Seminars included:

• Banking Law
• Competition Law
• Intellectual Property Law

A conference on Energy and Petroleum Law

The Legal Education Centre has also recently offered extremely popular courses on Mergers and Acquisitions, Commercial Law.

Trial Advocacy

The BLA - LEC introduced trial advocacy in South Africa in 1986. The training is designated to improve the advocacy skills and trial techniques of lawyers.

There is a basic three (3) day course and an advanced course that is condicted over six (6) days.

The programme also offers training for instructors to enable to deliver high quality training to participants of the trail advocacy programme.

Commercial Law Project

The Commercial Law Project has been conducted since 2004. It is a joint venture between the International Senior Lawyers Project base US, the BLA - LEC, the Senior Lawyers Division of the American Bar Association and the Johannesburg law firm Brink Cohen Le Roux. Attorneys conducted it over a period of thirteen (13) weeks in Commercial Law Practice with classes presented in the evening from Mondays to Thursdays (17H30 - 20H30 GMT).

The course covers the following topics:

• Purchase and sale agreements
• Drafting of Contracts
• Specific contracts such as Financial Agreements and Structures; Shareholder's Agreements; and Agency
• Distributor, Licensing and Franchise Agreements
• Specific transactions such as Joint ventures, IPOs and Stock Exchange Listing
• Mergers and Acquisitions
• Project Finance and Public Private Partnerships
• Dispute Resolution.

The course is conducted by South African instructors that are in their practices and also American and British retired attorneys who give their time and expertise to impart their knowledge and experiences. The course has been run in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, Mpumalanga and other metropolitan area.