A strange Law Firm trip.

Since I was back in Cape Town, I am not going to continue numbering the days of my road trip. On Friday, David, Cary, Hirsh and I went to the Cape Town offices of Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs, Africa's largest law firm. One of the partners (and a head honcho for organizing the World Cup) has some connection to Harvard, and he had arranged the firm to be one of the places around the world having mock interviews for HLS students during the summer. We were contacted first by Harvard, then by the recruitment people. It seemed that NO ONE knew what was going on, but they eventually arranged for the four of us to spend the day at the offices with their 'vac students.'

There were 18 vac students- law students from various universities on winter vacation attending a two week internship/job interview with the firm. It was really interesting talking to some of the SA law students about their education, which is varied and much different than ours, the legal market and recruitment.

We went on tours of the municipal courts in Cape Town, including the temporary FIFA courts that were set up for expedient trials involving out of town visitors. With only 170 cases for all of the courts over the course of the month, they ended up being a huge waste of money. Of course this is because there was much less crime than expected, so it is hard to complain about it too much. The courtroom was done in Bafana Bafana colors. Of course everyone was a bit critical--if the trials can be done in four days, then either there is insufficient due process with the quick cases or their is normally incredible inefficiency, since many cases, even simple ones, can take 18 months or more.

They also took us to the holding cells- the jails underneath the courts- and we watched someone called up and plead guilty. It was pretty uncomfortable for everyone.

We went out to see the pro bono office of ENS at a township area called Mitchell's Plain. Every attorney in the Western Cape has to have a certain number of pro bono hours, and one very surly, lonely guy manages the office out there. He led a discussion attempting to rationalize the entire endeavor of pro bono. After hearing the conversation, I will say this: Whatever you think about pro bono- the budding attorneys in South Africa are much more cold than the Americans.

After that endeavor, they took us back to the offices. This office building has a huge tower on it. On the 14th floor there is a restaurant with a 360 degree view of Cape Town. It is one of the best views I have seen, even though it really was not that high up.

ENS puts its label on EVERYTHING. They gave us ENS binders, cards, even cards that just said 'weekend time! time to party! ENS.' We walked on ENS carpet.

They cancelled the interviews for the day, since the practitioners wanted to watch the Brazil Netherlands game. We were okay with that, so we headed back to meet up with my college buddies.