Attorneys will recall that the Law Society of South Africa sent out a circular advising that it was negotiating with the Competition Commission on the Rules in as much as the Competition Commission had found that quite a number of the Rules of the various Law Societies were anti-competitive.  The various Law Councils are currently considering their draft Rules, and then submitting those through to the Law Society of South Africa, which will have, as I understand it, the final vetting process. 

In other words, one Law Society cannot simply go ahead and make its own rules on advertising, for example, if those rules are in conflict with the Competition Act, and without the Law Society of South Africa first approving them.  That is somewhat of a complex situation, particularly bearing in mind that the Law Societies are the regulatory bodies, and not the Law Society of South Africa, but all of the Law Societies are represented on the Law Society of South Africa and it is through that body that they have approached the Competition Commission, and the LSSA has given certain undertakings in this regard to the Competition Commission.  The LSSA did advise the Competition Commission that we would have a national set of rules, for all attorneys, by early 2011 and I wait to see those with some interest.