Lighthouse Law

The Lighthouse Academy launched its project Stories that Inspire in 2021 to introduce our interns and candidate attorneys to various legal career paths, including private practice, the public sector, in-house roles, and academia. Since its inception, we’ve had several legal professionals from South Africa, the UK, and the USA, join us to share valuable reflections and insights from their own career journeys. We were recently honoured to host Wellington Chimwaradze, Unilever’s Vice President – Legal. Wellington’s talk sparked engaging discussions on topics such as proactively managing personal development, valuing feedback and mentorship opportunities, the central role of human relationships in all professional interactions and focussing on running your ‘own race’ in your professional journey. Thank you, Wellington, for your time, your positive energy, and for sharing your story and insights with our team.

The second week of Lighthouse Law’s 2024 Vac Work program ended on Friday with the mock negotiations conducted by the students and a well-deserved celebratory social thereafter. Thank you to all our Vac Work students - Thomas Alfred, Justine Hitiyaremye, Miche Farao, Kealeboga Matsafu, Eryn Petersen, Thandolwethu Nofomela, Javahl Balia, and Demeye de Leeuw. It has been a pleasure getting to know you better and having you spend this time with us. We have enjoyed watching you go through the training sessions, engage in the discussions, and attempt the various work exercises. We have really valued your enthusiasm and participation in the training, the mock negotiations, and your general engagement with the Lighthouse Law Team. We wish you all the very best for the next steps in your legal career journeys.

There is much excitement (and a small dose of nerves) building among the Vac Work students for the mock negotiation they are doing at the end of the week. The training sessions this week have included a four-part Contracting Bootcamp covering a variety of topics that the students will be engaging with in their negotiation. The bootcamp has been designed to give the students exposure to various aspects of contract law in practice and there have been some interesting discussions coming out of those sessions. Today, the students spent some time finalising their arguments and approach for tomorrow’s mock negotiation. 

Lighthouse Law is proud to have won the 2024 African Legal Award for CSR, Diversity & Empowerment. Winning this category is particularly meaningful for us because Lighthouse Law was built with a focus on social responsibility and transformation. We launched the Lighthouse Academy in 2018 as a skills & development program for law graduates in South Africa that meet the BBBEE criteria. The purpose of the Lighthouse Academy is to use our sphere of influence as commercial lawyers to contribute meaningfully toward transformation in our society. The program provides high-quality legal training and mentorship, and we are incredibly proud of all our past and current interns, and of the commitment that our lawyers show to the training and mentorship they provide to our interns.

We have kicked off our second week of the Vac Work program with students from UWC, UCT and SUN. A very warm welcome to Javahl Balia, Eryn Petersen, Demeye De Leeuw and Thandolwethu Nofomela. We are looking forward to engaging with you through the various training sessions, workshops, and social activities we have lined up. We hope you will find the program to be a rewarding and enriching experience.

Our Vac Work students attended an interactive session this morning on ‘The changing face of law’ where they learnt more about areas of legal practice that are not traditionally part of the law school curriculum. It was great to see their interest and engagement around these topics. The discussions included the rise and use of legal tech, as well as the increasing focus on ‘legal ops’ to create greater efficiency for in-house legal teams. The students also learned more about contract management systems, which included a demo of LightHub.

Lighthouse Law welcomes its first cohort of Vacation Work students joining us today. This is the first of two Vac Work programs that we are running with students from Wits, UWC, UCT and SUN. Thomas Alfred, Justine Hitiyaremye, Miché Farao and Kealeboga Matsafu, the Lighthouse Team is looking forward to engaging with you through the various training sessions, workshops, and the social activities we have lined up. We hope you will find it to be an enriching experience.

Lighthouse Law has been shortlisted in the following four categories of the 2024 African Legal Awards: ◾ TMT Team of the Year ◾ Best Use of Tech ◾ Innovation ◾ CSR, Diversity, Transformation & Economic Empowerment We’re very proud of our team, and we also extend our congratulations to all the legal firms and individual lawyers shortlisted this year.

Lighthouse Law is proud to have received rankings in both the 2024 Chambers New Law Guide and the Chambers Global Wide Guide. Our team received a Band 2 rating for IT & Telecommunications, South Africa and a Global Wide Band 3 rating for Contract Lifecycle Management. Noting our team's “broad ranging transactional expertise” and its “strong mix of legal ability and commercial acumen”, Lighthouse was described by Chambers as a firm with “considerable standing in South Africa’s legal IT space”. Clients noted some of Lighthouse’s strengths as being a team that provides “good quality advice”, is “well-staffed for dealing with complex and sophisticated matters”, and that is “client focussed and accessible”. We value our client relationships immensely and are proud to be legal partners and to support them in achieving their business goals.

One of our founding values at Lighthouse Law is our commitment to being a force for good, and part of this mission involves our collaborative responsibility to address social challenges where we can. This month, we have chosen to support Ladles of Love, an organisation dedicated to combating malnutrition in children, providing nutritious meals to 4,000 children per day through generous donations and sandwich drives. We're proud to share that our team contributed through a sandwich drive, making over 500 sandwiches for this very worthy cause! If you'd like to learn more about this organization and their impactful work, please visit: https://lnkd.in/dNXXDYRC. #LighthousLaw #CommunitySupport #LadlesOfLove #SocialWellbeing #GivingBack