Understand your legal problem. Know what it costs. Get matched to a vetted attorney.

What LawMatch is

LawMatch is a South African website for people who have a legal problem and no idea what to do about it. We are not a law firm. We are a publisher and an introduction service, and we do three things.

We explain the problem in plain English. Most legal writing in this country is written for other lawyers, or it is written for an American reader and quietly assumes American law. Our guides are written for the person actually in the mess: the tenant whose deposit has not come back, the employee who was told not to come in on Monday, the parent whose maintenance stopped, the driver holding a fine they do not understand.

We show you what it costs. Nobody tells you this. You phone a firm, they ask you to come in, and the first number you hear is on an invoice. Our cost pages and calculators give you a realistic rand range and the reasons a matter lands at the top or the bottom of it, before you commit to anything.

We connect you to a vetted attorney, but only if you still need one after the first two. Plenty of people who arrive here do not.

How the matching works

The matching form takes four steps and about three minutes.

Step one: choose the area of law and, if you know it, the sub area. Divorce, retrenchment, eviction, a rejected insurance claim, a traffic fine.

Step two: tell us your province and your town, so we only consider firms who actually work there.

Step three: tell us how urgent it is and what you can realistically spend. If you tell us you cannot afford an attorney, we do not create a lead and we do not sell your details to anyone. We send you to free and low cost legal help instead, which is the honest answer to that question.

Step four: your name, your phone number, your email address and a short description of what happened. You tick a consent box under the Protection of Personal Information Act, and you can see exactly what that consent covers in our privacy policy.

We then send your details to up to three firms who practise that area of law in your area. They contact you. You are under no obligation to any of them, and you may use none of them.

It is free for you, always

You never pay LawMatch anything. There is no subscription, no unlock fee, no charge to read a guide or download a template or use a calculator or submit the matching form. Firms pay us a fixed amount for each lead they choose to accept, and some pay a flat monthly fee for a featured listing. Those are fixed amounts published to firms inside our portal. We never take a share of an attorney's fee, so nothing we do makes your matter more expensive.

How we check the firms

Every firm that appears in our attorney directory or receives a match has been checked against the Legal Practice Council register. A firm registers with us, gives us its LPC number and the practice areas and towns it serves, and we confirm that registration before it goes live. Until that check passes, a firm sits in a verification queue: invisible in the directory, and excluded from matching entirely.

Some firms reach us automatically from the AttorneyOS directory, which is our sister platform. Those are held to the same standard. A synced firm is only marked LPC verified when AttorneyOS supplies an LPC number and a status that means the register was genuinely checked. Anything short of that waits in the queue for a human.

Two honest caveats. Registration status can change after we check it, so if a matter is significant, check the practitioner yourself with the Legal Practice Council. And verification is not an endorsement. It means the firm is registered. It does not mean the firm is good, cheap or right for you. Ask for a written fee estimate before you instruct anybody.

We are not a law firm and we never give advice

This matters enough to say twice. LawMatch does not give legal advice. Nothing on this site is advice about your situation, because we do not know your situation. We have not seen your lease, your dismissal letter, your charge sheet or your policy wording, and we do not know what the magistrate in your town does with matters like yours.

Reading this site, filling in the matching form or emailing us does not create an attorney and client relationship with LawMatch or with anyone else. That relationship starts when you and an attorney agree to it, in writing, with a mandate and a fee arrangement. Our disclaimer and terms of use set out the full position, and the attorney terms set out what firms agree to.

Guides, costs, calculators and templates

The site is built around ten areas of law. Start with the one closest to your problem.

• Labour for dismissal, retrenchment, the CCMA, notice, leave and UIF.
• Family for divorce, maintenance, custody, parenting plans and protection orders.
• Property and tenancy for deposits, evictions, repairs, transfer costs and body corporate disputes.
• Debt and credit for debt review, prescription, garnishee orders, repossession and credit bureau listings.
• Claims and compensation for the Road Accident Fund, rejected insurance claims, medical negligence and consumer rights.
• Criminal for arrest, bail, first appearances, trial and clearing a record.
• Traffic and AARTO for fines, demerit points, warrants, impoundment and drunk driving.
• Immigration for visas, permanent residence, citizenship, asylum and appeals.
• Wills and estates for wills, deceased estates, executors and inheritance disputes.
• Small business and POPIA for company registration, contracts, first employees and data protection.

Each guide gives you the key points first, then the detail, then the questions people actually ask. The cost pages sit alongside them: what labour work costs, what a family matter costs, what a property matter costs, and one for every other area.

The calculators do the arithmetic you would otherwise get wrong. Check whether your dismissal referral is still in time with the CCMA deadline checker. Work out a retrenchment package, a notice period, a leave payout or a maintenance estimate. See whether your matter fits the Small Claims Court, whether a debt has prescribed, or what a property transfer will add to your bond.

The templates are documents you can download, fill in and send. A letter of demand for an unpaid debt, a deposit refund demand to a landlord, a grievance letter to your employer, a credit bureau dispute letter, a parenting plan and a simple will, among others.

The free routes come first

We would rather you solved this without paying anyone, including us.

South Africa has a large network of free forums built for people without attorneys. The CCMA hears dismissal disputes and costs nothing at any stage. The Maintenance Court sits in every Magistrates' Court and needs no lawyer. A protection order is free. The Small Claims Court allows no attorneys on either side, so nobody has the advantage. The Rental Housing Tribunal, the Community Schemes Ombud Service, the National Financial Ombud Scheme, the Consumer Goods and Services Ombud and the National Credit Regulator all take complaints from ordinary people at no cost. Legal Aid South Africa provides real representation to people who pass its means test.

All of that is set out, with what to bring and how to prepare, on our free and low cost legal help page. Read it before you pay anybody. If it solves your problem, we have done our job and earned nothing, which is the correct outcome.

Who this is for, and who it is not for

This site is for the ordinary person with an ordinary problem. Someone who needs to know whether what happened to them is even a legal matter, roughly what it would cost to fix, and who to phone.

It is not for lawyers looking for authority. It is not a substitute for advice on a matter that is already in court, already under an attorney or already the subject of a deadline running out this week. It is not for corporate or commercial work of any size. And it is not for an emergency. If you or someone else is in danger, phone the police on 10111, the Gender-Based Violence Command Centre on 0800 428 428, or Legal Aid South Africa on 0800 110 110.

How this content is written

Everything here is written by the LawMatch editorial team, in plain English, about South African law only. We do not invent section numbers, case names or statistics. Where a figure changes every year, we say so and point you at the source rather than freezing a number that will be wrong by March. Worked examples are labelled as illustrative, because they are.

We update pages as the law and the institutions change, and each page shows when it was last reviewed. Being straight with you about one thing: this content has been reviewed by Shephard Dube, who holds an LLB and is not an admitted attorney, so it has been read for accuracy and not approved as advice for your matter. When an admitted attorney reviews a page, that attorney will be named on it with their Legal Practice Council number. If no attorney is named, none has read it.

What to do next

Find your problem in the list above and read the guide. Check the cost page for that area so the first number you hear is not a surprise. Run the calculator if there is one, because a deadline you have already missed changes everything. Read the free help page and see whether a court, tribunal or ombud can do this for nothing.

If you still need an attorney after all that, use the matching form. It takes a few minutes, it costs you nothing, and you will speak to people who are registered to practise and who work where you live.