The Library
The Legal Practice Council (LPC) Library is a resource of the Legal Practice Council that exist to assist all Legal Practitioners and Candidate Legal Practitioners, with the legal information that they require in their day-to-day provision of legal services.
About Us
The Library
The Library exists to ensure that all Practitioners have access to the latest information available within their area of expertise, irrespective of affordability, as the service is available at no additional charge to them.
The service is provided, mainly, through online subscriptions with Sabinet, Juta, LexisNexis. These online subscriptions are paid for annually and the cost is based on the number of user licenses available.
The library currently has physical sites in Pietermaritzburg and Durban and an electronic help desk service that reaches out to all registered legal practitioners and candidate legal practitioners in South Africa.
The service is provided by our professional cyber competent librarians and we try to always reach out to our legal practitioners and others when possible, to provide useful information electronically whilst respecting copyright and fair use agreements.
Legal Practice Council
What can we do for you?
We have an online help desk service available to currently practising and non-practising Legal Practitioners.
We have an extensive collection of resources in print and electronic formats which can be viewed in our libraries.
Members who can visit our physical libraries are able to borrow the physical resources subject to availability and any restrictions contained in our conditions of service.
Our librarians will also guide you in finding materials for your research, both in hard copy and online, if requested.
We run user education sessions as and when necessary or when requested by members in both library sites as well as elsewhere by arrangement whilst we also work cooperatively with the principal legal service providers in South Africa as well as SAFLII and various others.
Our Conditions Of Service
Resourses
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Physical resources
1) Loan period is 3 working days for (law reports, books, journals) for affiliated Legal Practitioners only .
2) Extensions may be granted depending on the demand for the publication
3) No extension will be granted in case of law reports
4) Government / Provincial gazettes, statutes, dictionaries, and reserved publications may not be borrowed
5) A fine of R5.00 per day per item will be levied for overdue items
Electronic resources
1) Turnaround times are subject to the librarians’ schedules and we cannot guarantee a response within any particular time limit although we will usually respond to queries within two hours of receipt. We will do our best to serve our users as quickly as possible.
2) Librarians can copy and scan needed information if not available online at no cost.
3) Library cannot provide more than 5 cases for an electronic request.
4) Librarians provide photocopying service to walk-in legal practitioners at a cost.
5) Members can do their own photocopying at a cost recovery fee per page in our branches if necessary.
6) A cost recovery fee is also charged for faxed documents sent to members but there is no charge for scanned and e-mailed documents. Visitors to the physical libraries can use scanners free of charge and there will also soon be free wi-fi in the libraries for users.
LPC Library
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Membership to the LPC Library
Full membership, including the right to access at no cost all physical and electronic resources as well as borrow library materials subject to Library rules, is available for:
- All legal practitioners enrolled with the Legal Practice Council
- All currently registered Candidate Legal Practitioners (Candidate Attorneys and Pupils), including those doing community service at Law Clinics and Justice Centres
Use of the library for information including full access to our free [email protected] service, but not including the right to borrow library materials, is available for:
- Any non-practising on the roll of the Legal Practice Council
- Our librarians will use their discretion regarding the use of the library by Judges, Masters, State lawyers, Surveyor-General’s office, other Government departments, Provincial departments and any others who may wish to apply
General
The library is not available to members of the public or students nor do our librarians assist with university assignments.
LPC Library Team
Pietermaritzburg | Durban |
Thembinkosi Ngcobo | Rekha Woodhaymal |
Sindiswa Ndaba | Ayanda Mchunu |
Contact Details: | |
Telephone: 033 345 1304 | Telephone: 031 301 1621 |
Fax: 086 500 8555 | Fax: 086 500 6929 |
Help Desk
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What is our help desk?
We aim to make relevant legal information, especially public domain information, (archived or current) accessible to all our members whatever their geographical or virtual location.
We also provide readily downloadable topic based resources to assist our members and our librarians modify and supplement these continually.
Our automated help desk system ([email protected]) records and manages requests as well as responses thus allowing all our librarians to deal efficiently with electronic requests as quickly as possible.
This online service is unique amongst Southern African Development Community law societies and we have qualified, specialist librarians who serve our members.
Our Turn Around Time?
Turnaround times are subject to the librarians’ schedules and we cannot guarantee response within any particular time limit although we will try to meet members’ reasonable requirements.
We will try to assist as much as we can and we suggest that members telephone us in really urgent matters to see if we can arrange any assistance.
We aim to answer all requests received on any business day by the close of business that day but please also see our general conditions of service.
We will also try to assist Legal Practitioners from and beyond boarders of South Africa as well as enquirers from anywhere, but our members will have priority.
Our catalogue of resources we hold is accessible online and these resources can be consulted or borrowed by members who visit our library.
We have also developed a small collection of resources for legal practitioners which makes some useful resources such as statutes, relevant regulations and government documents available for downloading.
This section will expand as our librarians discover or develop useful new public domain resources though we always bear copyright in mind.
We also suggest that members look carefully at the resources already available to members from publishers such as LexisNexis and Juta which also offer a great deal of value added commentary and subject specific text books.
Our Links To Other Useful Information
We will also, where we are aware of them, provide links to other web resources including blogs that contain relevant material when providing responses to requests to our help desk. Please also try our various links as these may already lead you to information that is useful for your purposes.
http://www.binarylaw.co.uk/ : Binary Law: legal information in the digital age / Nick Holmes
Resources
Law Briefs
Our librarians have created some basic resources for various topics which they have found many practitioners ask them about. They are meant as guides only and are not legal advice.
These limited resources provide relevant statutes, regulations, and other public domain resources as well as useful links to other web resources including SAFLII but are not exhaustive.
Members must check with our librarians whether there have been any amendments before relying on information available from any extract or link.
Also explore LexisNexis and Jutas which both have extensive hard copy and electronic resources you can purchase or arrange on line access to on a subscription basis.