Senior Counsel system revived

A CENTURIES-OLD tradition that Namibia’s advocates kept alive until Government put a sudden end to it about five years ago has been revived with a decision to grant Senior Counsel status to one of the country’s top advocates, Dave Smuts.

The Society of Advocates informed Namibia’s legal practitioners by letter earlier this month that it had decided to confer Senior Counsel status on Smuts. He is now one of only four practising advocates entitled to put the letters “SC” behind his name and to robe in silk when he appears in court.The decision to bestow the honour on Smuts was taken by his peers – a committee of the previously existing SCs in the country: Louis Muller, Theo Frank and Pieter Henning.They recommended that Smuts be designated Senior Counsel according to the Society of Advocates.The committee made the recommendation after consultation with Acting Chief Justice Johan Strydom – himself one of the very few Senior Counsel in Namibia before he was appointed as a Judge in the pre-Independence forerunner to the High Court.Government has been by-passed by the advocates’ body which embarked on a revival of the SC system according to its own rules.Government steered legislation through Parliament five years ago to suspend the conferment of SC status and early last year finally repealed the provision in the Legal Practitioners Act that regulated the granting of SC status to senior legal practitioners.When the SC system was first suspended, an application by Smuts to be made a Senior Counsel was pending.In terms of the legal set-up at the time, such an application had to be made to the Minister of Justice, who, after receiving recommendations from the Judge President of the High Court and from the Chief Justice, had to send the application to the President, who had to actually confer SC status on an applicant.Many in the ranks of Namibia’s legal practitioners are of the opinion that the suspension of the SC system was in some way aimed at Smuts specifically, since Government was not sympathetic to his application.Lawyers have told The Namibian they suspected it was because of his involvement in cases in which the authorities faced accusations of human rights infringements; furthermore, because of the role he played as Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Legal Assistance Centre, of which he was the founding Director.The Society of Advocates decided to continue with the practice of giving SC status to its top members because it felt it would benefit the advocates’ profession internally.It would provide a further evolutionary stage for the development and growth of an advocate’s career, the Society’s President, Reinhard Tötemeyer, told The Namibian.He is now one of only four practising advocates entitled to put the letters “SC” behind his name and to robe in silk when he appears in court.The decision to bestow the honour on Smuts was taken by his peers – a committee of the previously existing SCs in the country: Louis Muller, Theo Frank and Pieter Henning.They recommended that Smuts be designated Senior Counsel according to the Society of Advocates.The committee made the recommendation after consultation with Acting Chief Justice Johan Strydom – himself one of the very few Senior Counsel in Namibia before he was appointed as a Judge in the pre-Independence forerunner to the High Court.Government has been by-passed by the advocates’ body which embarked on a revival of the SC system according to its own rules.Government steered legislation through Parliament five years ago to suspend the conferment of SC status and early last year finally repealed the provision in the Legal Practitioners Act that regulated the granting of SC status to senior legal practitioners.When the SC system was first suspended, an application by Smuts to be made a Senior Counsel was pending.In terms of the legal set-up at the time, such an application had to be made to the Minister of Justice, who, after receiving recommendations from the Judge President of the High Court and from the Chief Justice, had to send the application to the President, who had to actually confer SC status on an applicant.Many in the ranks of Namibia’s legal practitioners are of the opinion that the suspension of the SC system was in some way aimed at Smuts specifically, since Government was not sympathetic to his application.Lawyers have told The Namibian they suspected it was because of his involvement in cases in which the authorities faced accusations of human rights infringements; furthermore, because of the role he played as Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Legal Assistance Centre, of which he was the founding Director.The Society of Advocates decided to continue with the practice of giving SC status to its top members because it felt it would benefit the advocates’ profession internally.It would provide a further evolutionary stage for the development and growth of an advocate’s career, the Society’s President, Reinhard Tötemeyer, told The Namibian.