Paul Jacobson is Jacobson Attorneys’ founder and principal attorney. He started out his career as a commercial litigation attorney with Werksmans Incorporated and left to start his own practice, Jacobson Attorneys, in August 2005. On 1 August 2007 he launched a new media law and policy focus area in Jacobson Attorneys. This new emphasis draws on his experience with social media to provide an innovative service to clients involved in the new media space.

He has worked as General Counsel for the non-profit organisation iCommons and served as a member of a sub-committee of the SA Standards sub-committee dealing with Information Technology: Document Description and Processing Languages which recently considered and rejected the proposed Office Open XML standard in South Africa. He is presently also a part-time WASPA adjudicator and considers complaints filed against mobile operators registered as WASPA members.

Paul focuses on the intersect between the social Web and the law. He is particularly interested in open content licenses, protection of personal information, reputation issues and freedom of expression on the Web. He has maintained blogs since December 2004 and takes an active interest in the South African online digital community. He is also a social media fanatic and makes use of a variety of online services to interact with clients, colleagues and members of the broader online community including Twitter.

Paul has been frequently quoted in the media on a range of topics. Links to a number of articles is on this page.

Staff

Nastassja de la Guerre is a candidate attorney at Jacobson Attorneys. She studied towards her Bachelor of Laws degree (the LLB) at the University of Johannesburg. She is a member of the Golden Key Honours Society.

Nastassja commenced her articles with Jacobson Attorneys in January 2012 and works with Paul on a daily basis on a variety of cases including contractual disputes, leases and other commercial work.

Consultants

• Efi Bar-on completed 2 years of practical legal training at Werksmans Attorneys, Inc. Later legal experience included near on a year at D. Mirkin, Efrima, Barak, Milstein, Bonet & Co, Advocates, in Tel-Aviv, Israel and a further number of years at Jowell, Glyn & Marais, Inc in Sandton, South Africa. Efi also worked as a contract manager (legal) at the Standard Bank of South Africa Limited where he was responsible for reviewing agreements concluded by the latter with their suppliers.

  Efi produces a range of commercial legal agreements and documents that form the foundation of many of our clients’ business activites both on the Web and generally speaking including service level agreements, sponsorship agreements, leases and many more.

• Dr. David Bilchitz has a BA (Hons) LLB cum laude from Wits University. He graduated with an MPhil in Philosophy from St John’s College, University of Cambridge in 2001 and with a PHD in political philosophy and law from the same university in 2004. His book on ‘Poverty and Fundamental Rights: the Justification and Enforcement of Socio-Economic Rights’ was published by Oxford University Press in February 2007. He has several other publications in areas that include the Law of Evidence, Socio-Economic Rights, and Persons and Family law. His current research focuses on the relationship between business and human rights. His research interests include the intersection between political philosophy and constitutional law and the institutional implications in a wide-range of diverse areas.

  David completed his articles at Ross Kriel Attorneys from August 2004, where he gained expertise in public sector law. He was admitted as an attorney in May 2007. He has also worked for three years as a sessional lecturer in jurisprudence at the University of the Witwatersrand Law School and is currently Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is currently director of the South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Public, Human Rights and International Law.

  David is also a committed activist working towards social reform with his involvement in feminist, gay rights, poverty and animal rights issues. Recently, he was one of the key drivers in the campaign for civil marriage for same-sex couples in South Africa and acted as legal adviser to the Joint Working Group (a coalition of 17 lesbian and gay organisations). He has also campaigned for shelters for the homeless, has taught literacy and numeracy skills to streetchildren, has worked on improving dialogue between Jews and Palestinians surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict and is a founder member of the Legal Alliance for Animal Welfare.