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Directorate

Presently the structure is as follows:  
 
  • Director
  • Manager:  Professional Affairs
  • Manager:  Risk and Compliance - Vacant
  • Senior RASS Inspector
  • Senior RASS Inspector – Vacant
  • Bookkeeper
  • Librarian
  • Office Administrator:  Directorate  
  • Office Administrator: Professional Affairs
  • Office Administrator:  RASS - Vacant
  • GOSP Officer  
  • Messenger/Cleaner  

Director

The Director of the Society is the head of the office and inter alia responsible for:

  • Administering and organizing the affairs of the LSN, its members and its staff
  • Ensuring the LSN’s financial sustainability
  • Ensuring that Risk & Compliance are dealt with
  • Ensuring policy formulation and implementation thereof
  • Liaising with the Society’s members for the purpose of providing the Council with input with regard to their needs and problems
  • Ensuring that professional standards are maintained and implementing measures to take remedial action when this is not the case
  • Liaising with members of the public and the press in order to promote the image of the profession
  • Ensuring good corporate governance
  • Ensuring that the Legal Practitioners Act, Act 15 of 1995, is adhered to
  • Ensuring that the Rules of the Law Society of Namibia are adhered to
  • Ensuring that the Council/Directorate of the LSN adheres to the Objects of the LSN and Powers of the LSN
  • Ensuring that the Council/Directorate/LSN achieve the objectives of protecting the integrity of the profession
  • Representing the LSN on international, regional and local bodies, such as serving a Trustee of the Namlex Chambers Body Corporate and is also the Managing Agent of Namlex Chambers
  • Organization of training, meetings of various institutions
  • Facilitating Council’s shared vision
  • Evaluating opportunities
 
The Director is assisted by an Office Administrator:  Directorate.  Her main functions are inter alia:
 
  • General office organisation and staff assistance
  • Typing and filing
  • Arranges and diarizes appointments  
  • Assists with the preparation of meetings
  • Assists with the organization of special events such as training sessions, functions and seminars  
  • Supervises the issuing and ordering of stationery, office supplies as per laid down procedures
 
Professional Affairs Division
 
The position of Manager: Professional Affairs is responsible inter alia for the primary management of internal and external relationships in various segments, corporate governance and supporting the strategic and operational objectives of the LSN.  The key performance areas of this position are to:
 
  • Ensure the efficient delivery of administrative and secretarial support to the LSN Council, President and various LSN Committees
  • Assist with ongoing statutory compliance and risk management
  • Implement and manage ongoing national educational, training and development programmes
  • Give guidance to external and internal stakeholders and role players with regard to professional affairs matters
  • Manage projects and assignments as required or identified by Council and Director
  • Monitor best practices and make recommendations to Council with regard to professional affairs
 
The Manager:  Professional Affairs is assisted by the Office Administrator: Professional Affairs - who provides administrative assistance with regard to all committee and complaints.  She is also the one who distributes the various LSN e-mails to the members.   Her duties inter alia entail:  
 
  • To advise members of the public on the procedures to follow for laying a complaint at the LSN;
  • To distribute Council as well as all other Committee’s Agenda and Minutes to the relevant parties
  • To attend to all Professional Affairs correspondence
  • To assist with the drafting of Agenda for Committees
  • To remind Committee members of scheduled meetings
  • To keep Committee statistics

Risk & Compliance Division

The protection of trust monies held by practitioners in private practice forms an integral part of the protection of the integrity of the legal profession.  The Law Society plays a pivotal role in protecting such public funds by assisting firms in complying with the rules and regulations regarding the keeping of trust monies and by conducting regular inspections to ensure that firms do comply.  This department is responsible to:

  • Ensure that members of the legal fraternity adhere to the “financial” rules of the LSN
  • Assist with the monthly Reform Audit Support System - RASS report for submission to the Council of the Law Society
  • Assist with the development of and adherence to control procedures at legal firms
  • Assist firms in all areas of compliance with the Legal Practitioners Act (15 of 1995), the Rules of the Law Society and any other legislation that impacts on the legal profession, i.e. Financial Intelligence Act, Competition legislation and the Usury Act
  • Negotiate agreements with banks applicable to legal practitioner trust accounts
  • Ensure good corporate governance
  • Provide training to legal practitioner firms
  • Manage a new system of annual internal trust inspections at firms  
  • Risk Management
  • Trust account inspections

The pilot RASS project, which we adopted from the KwaZulu Natal Law Society, was provided to the firms who volunteered to be part of the project, free of charge.  The compelling reason to implement the project in Namibia was that it had the potential to reduce costs (for firms and the Fidelity Fund) and for the early detection of defalcations.  RASS certainly help the members to arrange their own affairs effectively.  This project was initiated to, inter alia, reflect a remedial approach by providing on-site guidance and recommendations aimed at helping a firm to correct minor deficiencies with its bookkeeping practices before they lead to serious non-compliance or misconduct issues.   

Approximately 60% of the firms are presently on RASS.  All the new firms automatically participate in RASS and therefore it has become necessary to appoint additional staff members to cope with the workload generated from RASS inspections and assistance to the firms.   

The Risk and Compliance department also assists members who intend to open a firm or if a legal practitioner is appointed as a partner or director at a firm.  The assistance is provided free of charge to such new firms or new partners/directors, not only as part of the risk and compliance management of the LSN but also to guide legal practitioners to make the right choices prior to opening a law firm or accepting the appointment as a partner/director.  The guidance provided by the LSN will ensure that all the legal requirements are in place by the time that the Director must consider the application for a fidelity fund certificate.  

A 13 – step guide has been developed over recent years to guide the legal practitioner to set up his/her firm to ensure that everything is in place - on how to effectively and efficiently start a practice, the requirements, start up capital that could be required etc.   

It is a goal of the LSN that each firm should be visited at least once a year.  All legal practitioners and/or their bookkeepers are welcome to call on the Risk and Compliance Department for assistance and guidance.  Legal practitioners should remember that they, as legal practitioners and partners/directors of a firm, are responsible and these responsibilities can not be delegated to the bookkeeper(s).   

This department further ensures that all the firms have Anti-Money Laundering – AML - programmes in place and is working in close consultation with the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC).  This is a requirement of the Financial Intelligence Act for all firms.  The Law Society has an obligation to ensure that firms have the programmes in place and as such the Directorate will assist firms as much as possible to meet this requirement.   

Bookkeeper

This position is inter alia responsible for the operational and strategic financial management of the LSN:

  • Daily bookkeeping function of the society, including payroll management, tenants, net interest collections, and fixed asset register updates
  • Compiling the annual budget, monthly cash flow projection and Fidelity Fund claims
  • Annual audit preparations
  • Preparing monthly financial statements and reporting monthly to the Council of the LSN  
  • Compiling monthly reconciliations of the LSN Rule of Law Trust account
  • Issuing and collection of membership fees
  • Liaising with the Director on all matters relating to the LSN’s finances
 
Library

The LSN is maintaining a law library and the Librarian is inter alia responsible:   
 
  • For the proper management and library stock and identification of new purchases  
  • To keep the catalogues, registers and indexes up to date  
  • For liaison with members, other librarians, LexisNexis, JUTA and publishers
  • To keep records of electronic reported and unreported judgments and to maintain an index or computerized database of these  
  • To provides research assistance where possible
  • To annotate amendments and subordinate legislation in the Government Gazette of Namibia.
 
General Office for Serving of Process – GOSP
 
All process, both civil and criminal - but excluding process instituting legal proceedings, Urgent Applications, Notice to Plead/ Bar - may be served at the LSN and the LSN provides the Windhoek firms with the following:   
 
  • Making available an office for general service of processes on the 1st Floor of the Namlex Chambers  
  • Employing a clerk to man the office on weekdays from 08h00 to 13h00 and from 14h00 to 17h00 from the 15th day of January or the first working day following the 15th day of January of each year until the 16th of December at 17h00 (or the last working day before 16th of December) of each and every year
  • supplying and maintaining a register for registering all processes to be served and uplifted.
 
Messenger / Cleaner
 
The Messenger/Cleaner’s responsibilities inter alia include:
 
Making refreshments, general kitchen and office cleaning, messenger work, stocktaking, photocopying, board room set-up, reporting, deliveries and banking duties.
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