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BusinessDay www.businessday.co.za Thursday 16 November 2023
INSIGHTS Creative thinking is required Anthony Norton from law firm Nortons Inc has been recognised by Best Lawyers 2024 for the second consecutive year in competition/antitrust law. Pointing out that the legal profession operates in a highly competitive and challenging environment where clients have become conscious of costs and budgets, Norton says what differentiates firms is their ability to take on more challenging and difficult cases. “Increasingly, successful lawyers are required to have more than just legal expertise at hand. They need to be creative thinkers who can approach matters from different angles.” A boutique law firm offering high levels of expertise, Nortons Inc has been involved in a number of interesting cases in the past year. It successfully represented eMedia Holdings — the owners of e.tv — in a case against the MultiChoice Group
Anthony Norton … transition. when the former removed some of e.tv’s channels off its DStv platform, and is involved in another case involving licensing of the rights to broadcast sporting events that will be considered by the competition authorities. The firm also represented Impala Platinum in its acquisition of Royal Bafokeng Platinum. More recently, the firm represented the Diageo Group when it acquired the rights to distribute Gordon’s Gin
in Southern Africa. The firm also represents Private Property in relation to the Commission’s market inquiry into online markets and in relation to BetterHome’s acquisition of control over Private Property. “In competition and regulatory law, the challenge is the ability to transition between different industries and to develop a good understanding of a particular industry in a short space of time. This type of law requires a refined understanding of both law and economics,” says Norton. As a relatively small firm, Nortons Inc has eschewed the traditional top-down model and adopted a flatter structure which facilitates junior lawyers becoming actively involved in cases. Says Norton: “In the legal industry, you are only as good as your last case which means the challenge is to maintain high standards and quality in every matter the firm is involved in.”
IN THE LEGAL INDUSTRY, YOU ARE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR LAST CASE
BEST LAWYERS 2024 Sponsored content
SA lawyers take centre stage on annual ‘Best’ list • Work of country’s legal professionals recognised by awards and peers, writes Lynette Dicey
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est Lawyers, the oldest and most respected peer review accolade company in the legal profession, this year recognised 46 South African lawyers as Lawyer of the Year. The “Lawyer of the Year” honours are awarded annually to only one lawyer per practice area in each region. Lawyers are nominated for consideration and voted on by lawyers working in the same practice area and located in the same geographic region. Those who receive high peer reviews undergo a thorough verification process to ensure they are currently still in private practice. Best Lawyers has been honouring the professional excellence of lawyers in SA since 2008, recognising lawyers across a multitude of practice areas. The ranking is achieved by conducting exhaustive peer-review surveys in which tens of thousands of leading lawyers confidentially
evaluate the work of their fellow legal professionals within their local market and speciality. The rankings are based on a proven methodology that relies on quantitative and quantitative data on legal skill set, achievements and client successes collected through a submission process managed by Best Lawyers. Awards are determined based on a handful of factors including lawyer feedback, the number of lawyers included in Best Lawyers for that firm and practice areas, the number of office locations a firm has, historical analysis of the firm’s “Lawyer of the Year” awards, materials submitted by firms and the firm’s overall scope and areas of expertise. The “Law Firm of the Year” awards recognise a single top firm for its work in a specific legal practice area nationwide. Similar to the individual recognitions, the Law Firm of the Year awards are feedback driven. Individual lawyer and
firm peer review from the Best Lawyers surveys and firm recognition history are considered; additionally, the programme looks for firmographic information and significant matters from the past year to further its understanding of firms under consideration for these awards. The big winners this year were Webber Wentzel and ENSafrica, who top the list with two awards each. Webber Wentzel received awards for corporate law and mining law while ENSafrica received awards for banking and finance law and tax law. This is the second consecutive year that ENSafrica has won the Law Firm of the Year in the banking and finance category and the
third consecutive year it has won the tax law award. Pinsent Mason received the award for construction law for the third year in a row. Kimberly Welsh, research analyst manager at Best Lawyers, says this year’s ranking revealed some contraction in big practice areas such as corporate law, mergers and acquisitions law, litigation and labour and employment. “This contraction is likely due to lawyers retiring or moving to in-house positions rather than any reduction in the need for those lawyers. We expect this to create space for the next generation of exceptional corporate lawyers to come into the spotlight in the coming years.” The top 10 practice areas by
Profession needs to embrace technology Michelle Walton, a partner at Smiedt & Associates — recognised for real estate law and litigation in Best Lawyers 2024 — says the biggest challenge facing the legal profession is that it is still not advancing with technology. “The industry as a whole has rejected most technology,” says Walton. “We hope that the next great step forward will be the real technological advancement of the legal profession.” A 2021 report by Wolters Kluwer titled “Future Ready Lawyer” revealed corporate legal departments expect their law firms to leverage technology to increase efficiency and productivity. The report, which provided insights from 700 legal professionals across Europe and the US, found 81% of
Michelle Walton … relationships. law firms said they expected to make greater use of technology to improve productivity. What sets a law firm apart in the current environment, she says, is the ability to develop relationships with clients. “Post Covid we have seen a return to
TO GET TO THE TOP YOU NEED THE BEST ...to be the best
81%
of the 700 legal professionals across Europe and the US who gave insights in the 2021 report by Wolters Kluwer titled ‘Future Ready Lawyer’ said they expected to make greater use of technology to improve productivity
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size in SA are corporate law, litigation, M&A law, labour and employment law, intellectual property law, banking and finance law, competition and antitrust law, construction law, real estate law and insurance law. “This year we continued our trend of increasing the number of voters with each edition of The Best Lawyers in South Africa and collected more than twice as many votes as we received for the previous edition,” says Welsh. “Our voters’ expert feedback allowed us to recognise about 4% of the total number of lawyers in private practice within SA for 2024.” To see the full list, log on to https://www.businesslive.co.za/ bd/national/2023-11-16lawyers-of-the-year-2024/
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in-person meetings for most clients. Conversely, more clients from other jurisdictions locally and globally are keen to consult as they now no longer need to deal with the expense and time of travel and can rather simply attend meetings remotely.” Smiedt & Associates has had another good year, growing both externally and internally. “The challenge for us is making sure our office environment is one that allows for our staff to progress their own careers and at the same time still give clients excellent service. Ultimately, we’re in a service business and what separates us from other firms is the service level we instil in all our staff.” Ian Lindsay, a director at Knowles Husain Lindsay Inc (KHL), says the biggest challenges facing law firms today are attracting and retaining the right people, bearing in mind the need to transform and diversify. Lindsay was recognised by Best Lawyers 2024 in insolvency and reorganisation law. A successful law firm, he says, is one that can give its clients the best outcome in a specific scenario. “KHL’s vision is to give the client a strategic advantage in all the areas of law in which we practice. It’s common nowadays for lawyers simply to react without giving thought to what is to the client’s advantage. We act strategically by prioritising to achieve a longterm gain. All clients these days expect their lawyers to be competent and up to date. We go beyond that by thinking and acting strategically. Our clients and peers recognise this. The measure of our success is that large law firms and corporates seek to persuade our junior associates to join them as they know we have given our juniors an exceptional training.” What sets KHL apart, he says, is more agility than its larger competitors. “In short, we are a powerful, agile vessel staffed by the right people.” The firm is looking at how best to use AI in keeping with its vision of giving clients a strategic advantage in all their matters. “AI is probably one of the most exciting challenges we, as lawyers, have faced for years,” says Lindsay. When it comes to choosing a lawyer, choose one who is best suited to deal with your problem, says Lindsay. “Word of mouth is still often the best recommendation. Making use of reputable objective thirdparty publications such as Best Lawyers is a good idea as they have generally used objective criteria to make recommendations.”