How Legal Professionals Can Stay Steady in Unsteady Times

If you have ever prepared twice for a hearing only to have it slip the roll, briefed counsel in a haze of last-minute directives, or steadied a client’s panic with half-confirmed information, you are not alone. Uncertainty has become part of the daily landscape of practice in South Africa.

Dates shift. Rules evolve overnight. Institutions wobble.

In some areas of practice such as insolvency, business rescue, and matters touching on corruption, risk has taken on an even darker dimension. In September 2025, insolvency attorney Bouwer van Niekerk was assassinated in Johannesburg, just over two years after the murders of Cloete and Thomas Murray. His death sent shock waves through the profession. As SARIPA’s chairperson Jo Mitchell-Marais put it:

“It is heartbreaking and utterly unacceptable that in South Africa, courageous, ethical professionals should have to pay with their lives simply for doing their jobs.”

This tragic loss has stunned and angered the legal fraternity, intensifying the anxiety and uncertainty experienced by many legal professionals. This article cannot ease the pain that follows such a brutal attack, but it seeks to help legal professionals navigate the uncertainty that have become such defining features of our profession.

The question is not whether we can eliminate uncertainty. We cannot. The real question is how we can continue to practise well within it: protecting judgement, steadying clients, supporting colleagues, and safeguarding ourselves.

Why uncertainty weighs so heavily here

Uncertainty is taxing in any profession. In law, it strikes at the systems we rely on most: attention, working memory, risk assessment, and trust. When rules and timelines shift without warning, the mind often defaults to scanning for threats. Worst-case thinking begins to creep in, clients notice it, and soon even routine tasks can feel unstable.

In South Africa, this weight is compounded by broader systemic pressures:

• Procedural volatility: compulsory mediation in Gauteng, ongoing disputes with the Road Accident Fund, shifting directives across divisions.
• Institutional fragility: uneven enforcement, under-resourced courts, and a Legal Practice Council grappling with over 22,000 complaints in a single year with only four hundred staff nationally.
• Administrative delays: property transfers, commercial contracts, and routine applications increasingly depend on municipal or state departments that are slow to respond, inconsistent in their processes, or provide incomplete information. Timeframes that once could be planned for are now open-ended, leaving clients frustrated and legal professionals carrying the weight of delays they cannot control.
• Cultural strain: Advocate’s August 2025 survey revealed that almost a third of Johannesburg advocates reported experiencing sexual harassment, and more than 60% had witnessed it. This is not only corrosive to dignity; it undermines trust within chambers where practitioners should feel safest.

Uncertainty here is not simply a question of diaries and directives. It is systemic, cultural, and at times existential. That is why the supportive frameworks; the routines, structures and language that restore clarity, has become essential.

1. Personal: Holding your centre when the ground shifts

When external conditions are unstable, the first responsibility is to safeguard the quality of your own judgement.

• Micro-resets: These are small, practical pauses that can help steady the mind. Try a cycle of 4-7-8 breathing before stepping into a call, allow yourself a 90-second pause before replying to unsettling news, or run a brief “uncertainty scan” by asking: What has changed? What still holds? What is my next controllable action?
• Anchors in your day: Begin and end with short rituals that signal stability. A calendar review and ten minutes of planning in the morning, followed by a quick triage of tomorrow’s files at the end of the day, create a rhythm that holds even when circumstances do not.
• Decision hygiene: When a choice arises under pressure, take a moment to capture it clearly. Write down the decision, set out three viable options, and define a “kill switch” (for example, If X has not arrived by Thursday, we will proceed with Option B). This keeps decisions transparent and reduces the risk of revisiting them in moments of stress.

These are not indulgences. They are circuit-breakers that prevent adrenaline from taking control of your practice.

2. Matter management: Bringing order to shifting sands

A file often feels chaotic not because change occurs, but because change is undocumented. Capturing it clearly makes the matter manageable again.

• Scenario bands: Map out best, base, and worst outcomes on a single page, together with the triggers that would signal when to shift between them. This gives you and your team a structured view of possible futures rather than reacting case by case.
• Assumptions register: Record the rules, directives, or facts on which you are currently relying. Mark each as confirmed, to be monitored, or at risk. This helps you see at a glance where your matter stands and what may need rethinking if circumstances change.
• Unknowns log: List the uncertainties that materially affect strategy. For each, note how you intend to reduce it, whether by a request, a subpoena, an expert opinion, or an informal call, and set a realistic deadline.
• If -Then rules: Prepare responses in advance for common disruptions. For example, If the hearing is rescheduled with less than 48 hours’ notice, then we will file the brief update, contact the client with Script A, and rebook counsel within the week.
• Contingency packs: Keep pre-drafted documents on hand, such as short heads for postponements, template correspondence for schedule changes, and a running chronology that can be quickly adapted. This ensures you do not have to start from nothing each time.

These tools are not about adding unnecessary paperwork. They are practical frameworks that bring order when the terrain refuses to hold still.

3. Clients: Clarity without false certainty

Clients are often more unsettled by silence than by difficult news. What they need is a steady rhythm of communication and language that makes the process feel guided, even when outcomes remain uncertain.

• Control, influence, monitor: Frame updates around what you control, what you can influence, and what you are monitoring. This helps clients see that you are attentive and proactive, even where events are outside your hands.
• Use ranges, not absolutes: Avoid single-point predictions. Instead, set out a range of possible outcomes and the likelihood of each. For example: “Based on current information, we see three likely paths, with these probabilities…” This allows for honesty without creating false expectations.
• Set a clear update rhythm: Agree on a consistent cadence from the outset, such as “You will hear from us every Friday at 16:00, even if nothing has changed.” A predictable rhythm builds trust and prevents anxiety from filling the gaps.
• Scripts for volatile moments: When events shift suddenly, rely on clear, pre-prepared language. If a hearing is postponed, begin with what has already been secured and what remains unchanged, before explaining the next steps. This communicates leadership and steadiness when clients need it most.

Clients rarely expect certainty. What they seek is clarity, consistency, and the reassurance that their matter is being actively managed.

4. Teams and practices: Making uncertainty a process risk

Uncertainty should not be left to weigh on individuals alone. It is better understood and managed as a process risk that a team addresses together.

• Directive trackers: Maintain a central tracker that records directives, divisions, effective dates, and practical implications, with a short plain-language summary. This makes it easier for everyone, from juniors to senior counsel, to grasp the impact without having to parse dense notices.
• Contingency checklists: Prepare checklists for hearings that cover alternative attendance options, duplicate bundles, back-up counsel, and travel or connectivity arrangements. This prevents small disruptions from becoming major setbacks.
• Cross-briefing: Assign a shadow reader for every live matter so that another practitioner can step in at short notice. Keep a two-page rolling brief updated each week to make this handover seamless.
• Stand-ups: Hold short, focused team check-ins. Limit the agenda to three questions: What changed? What still holds? What is the next controllable action? This keeps conversations grounded in progress rather than speculation.
• Knowledge capture: When a team navigates a disruption, record what happened, how it was managed, and what should be repeated or avoided in the future. Store these in an “uncertainty playbook” so that the lessons are available for the next challenge.

Treating unpredictability as a shared process helps to protect morale, distribute responsibility, and create confidence that the practice can continue to function even when conditions are unstable.

When uncertainty turns to danger

The devastating assassination of Bouwer van Niekerk is a sobering reminder that unpredictability in South Africa can go beyond shifting directives or postponed hearings. For those probing corruption and insolvency, it can take the form of personal danger.

Parliament’s Ian Cameron has warned that professionals working on high stakes matters often face the risk of execution, and too often the perpetrators remain at large. This has left many practitioners unsettled, not only because of the immediate risks but also because of the sense of vulnerability it creates across the profession.

The legal community is rightly shaken. Yet the response cannot only be fear. It must also be solidarity. That means insisting that the safety, integrity, and protection of practitioners are treated as non-negotiable.

To practise steadily in this climate requires more than personal tools and case strategies. It also requires collective action: building workplaces and chambers where colleagues feel respected and secure, and standing together to demand systemic protection so that professionals can continue their work without fearing for their lives.

Final thought

We cannot choose the level of uncertainty in the system, whether it comes as a shifting directive, a postponed trial, or the unthinkable loss of a colleague. What we can choose is how we respond.

To practise steadily in South Africa today requires more than technical skill. It requires personal steadiness, supportive structures, and collective resolve. The professionals who will carry the system forward are not those who promise certainty, but those who continue to act with clarity, calm, and courage even when the terrain refuses to hold still.

For more resources, visit www.pmri.co.za.