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12. Pro Bono Work

As part of the Group BEE standards, member firms have made a
commitment towards conducting pro bono work and ensuring that
support is given where possible to requests from the relevant Law
Societies for pro bono assistance. In 2016, Group firms spent in excess
of R1.85 million on pro bono services and in 2017, more than R2.86
million, a strong confirmation of the commitment of member firms to
providing broader access to justice.

13. Black Legal Over R225 million
in procurement
Service Providers expenditure on BEE

compliant suppliers
Member firms recognise the need to support and develop black
legal service providers (advocates, sheriffs, tracing agents, law firms by Group firms
etc.) and thereby contribute to the wider transformation of the legal
industry. It also aligns with improving BEE procurement expenditure during 2016 and
and serves to assist firms to adhere to the Group BEE standards. The
result has seen a tremendous increase in the expenditure on black 2017
legal service providers by member firms over the last two years. In 2016
the total support amounted to R39.3 million, rising to R43.4 million in
2017 being spent by Group firms on black legal service providers.

14. Procurement

The impact of the procurement element under the Amended
BEE Codes has been enormous, forcing all businesses to not
only aggressively increase their BEE levels, but also to pay more
attention to their internal procurement policies to make certain
that expenditure is placed with suppliers that are BEE compliant.
This shift is also visible in the rising procurement expenditure to BEE
compliant suppliers and service providers by Group firms over the
last two years, with nearly R106.5 million in BEE procurement spend
on black suppliers in 2016, escalating to over R120 million in 2017.

Appreciating the importance of procurement and the need to
continue to develop black-owned suppliers, the Group has moved
to establish a central procurement company GroupServe (Pty)
Ltd to utilise the economies of scale available in the procurement
book of the Group to enhance the procurement value of member
firms and leverage the sourcing and development of black-owned
suppliers for member firms to procure from.

A new breed of law firm 23