Our Legal Services division is going digital! The primary focus of the Legal Services Division, which falls under my portfolio, is on student discipline across all University of Pretoria (UP) campuses.

The Legal Services team consists of two legal advisors, a junior legal advisor, a legal assistant and an operations professional. The team is supported by an in-house law firm, Inlexso, which assists with litigation. The team has also hosted a cohort of legal interns for the past four years.

In order to better serve the UP community, their focus has shifted to digitising the processes within the division and expanding its services. Digitisation will allow for improved workflow and enable the team of legal professionals to optimise resources, and improve services for staff and students.

The Legal Services team offers the following services:

• Student discipline – providing legal and administrative support in respect of disciplinary matters involving students;
• Contract management and support – negotiating, drafting, scrutinising, and managing contracts and other legal documents;
• Trademarks – trademark registration and renewals; and
• Establishing, maintaining and promoting statutory regulations and decisions that direct the functioning of the University.

The support of staff is essential as we:

• Move over to digital platforms to report and manage student disciplinary matters;
• Migrate all contracts in the University to an online system for risk management; and
• Establish a comprehensive trademark register and digitise it to ensure compliance.

A user manual and tutorial video are available on the Legal Services Division’s webpage to assist staff with reporting student misconduct cases. Cases may no longer be reported telephonically or via email. We have already started induction sessions with faculties, but additional training sessions will be offered upon request.

Note: Only cases reported on the case management system will be attended to. Any exam-related misconduct needs to be reported to the relevant lecturer; the lecturer will be responsible for reporting (logging) the matter on the case management system.

For more information about the student misconduct cases system or training, contact Genevieve Fourie Teles at [email protected] 

For assistance with any other services offered by the Legal Services Division, kindly send your request to [email protected]

I hope you will embrace this new technology; please contact any of the above-mentioned colleagues if you experience any challenges.