At the beginning of May 2019, the Faculty of Law at the University of Pretoria welcomed the new Director of its Law Clinic, Mr Eddie Hanekom B Juris (PU for CHE) LLB (UP) LLM (cum laude) (UP). 

Mr Hanekom is a practicing attorney and held the position as the Director of the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) Law Clinic from 2007 to April 2019, whereafter he was appointed in the place of the retired Director, Mr Frans Haupt.  Eddie has vast experience in the legal practice and training. He has lectured the module Applied Legal Studies to final year law students.

After serving his articles of clerkship in 1988 to 1989 at Couzyn Hertzog and Horak and thereafter at Dr. PJ Kotzé & Partners, he was admitted as an attorney on 26 March 1991. He was subsequently employed at the Multilateral Motor Vehicle Accident Fund, being only the second admitted attorney to be employed by this institution. In 1996, he started a private law firm in Hatfield, Pretoria, first practicing as Eddie Hanekom Attorneys, and later in partnership under the name and style of Hanekom-Grobler Attorneys in Pretoria. This practice was associated with two other firms of attorneys. In 2001 he started out as a sole practitioner in the firm Hanekom Attorneys, and later also joined Gerard Stoop attorneys as an associate and consultant. He practices as an Attorney of the High Court of South Africa in Gauteng.

He further served as an academic associate and lectured in the Law of Criminal Procedure to LLB students at the University of Pretoria in the years 2000 to 2007, before joining the University of Johannesburg in 2007. He served as lecturer in the final year LLB module Applied Legal Studies at the University of Johannesburg and served as Academic Coordinator and lecturer of the National Diploma in Law (Paralegal Studies) at the University of Johannesburg for a number of years. He served as a member of various committees, including the Animal Use and Care Committee (AUCC) at the University of Pretoria, and was a member and chair of the Student Disciplinary Appeals Committee at UJ.

Eddie previously specialised in Road Accident Fund claims, and also handled other personal injury claims, criminal cases and matrimonial law and has a sound knowledge of the provision of legal services and court structures. He has further been practicing and teaching in Clinical Legal Education at the Universities of Johannesburg and Pretoria respectively for more than a decade, gaining extensive experience in and knowledge of issues surrounding the promotion of access to justice. This includes teaching the principles of professional responsibility and legal ethics. He has served as member of the Executive Committee of the South African Universities Law Clinics Association (SAULCA) and is currently serving his second term as Vice-President of this national organisation.

Since 1999, he has been an instructor and later senior instructor of the Law Society of South Africa (LSSA) Legal Education and Development (LEAD) Department at a number of Schools for Legal Practice, and training candidate attorneys at LEAD’s Five-week courses on topics of personal injury claims, legal costs, matrimonial law and numeracy skills. He also been the chair of the LSSA LEAD’s Review Panel for the Personal Injury Claims Manual during 2016 and contributed to the recently published book, “Law Clinics the Clinical Law Movement in South Africa” edited by Prof Jobst Bodenstein.

The University of Pretoria Law Clinic has a proud tradition of rendering free* legal services to the community, more specifically to the less privileged and often marginalised members of the community. It has branches on the Hammanskraal and Hatfield campuses of the University of Pretoria.  In 2017, the Law Clinic provided legal services to 3 853 of the community.

The Law Clinic provides learning-by-doing training to law students (the well-acclaimed PRR400 programme) in their final year at the Faculty of Law.  

The Faculty extends a warm welcome to Eddie Hanekom and wishes him the very best with his important role at the Law Clinic, which has always been regarded as one of the best law clinics in the country.  

*  Terms and conditions apply