Brendan Barry heads our public sector department. He specialises in legal policy, legislative drafting, and regulatory reform. Brendan has conducted substantive law and policy reviews and was centrally involved in drafting a broad range of laws at regional, national, provincial, and local government levels. These include the South African Schools Act, the Higher Education Act, the Skills Development Amendment Act, and the Mine Health and Safety Amendment Act.

His experience in managing largescale legal projects includes the Land Rights Management Facility for the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform that promoted access to justice for vulnerable land occupiers across South Africa. The project involved more than 2,000 cases with over 340,000 beneficiaries over a three-year period.

Brendan has advised a wide range of public and private sector clients, including governments at regional, national, provincial, and local levels, major public entities, companies, trade unions and non-governmental organisations. He has authored several books, including Schools & the Law (Juta), the Skills Development Handbook (Juta) (co-author), and the Law & Policy Handbook on Public Transport (Juta).

Brendan’s key practice areas include administrative and constitutional law, education and skills development law, employment law and occupational health and safety law. He has extensive litigation experience.

Brendan serves as a member of the Advisory Council on Occupational Health and Safety (ACOHS), appointed by the Minister of Employment and Labour.

Brendan received a Bachelor of Arts (BA), in 1987 and a Bachelor of Laws (LLB), in 1989, both from the University of the Witwatersrand. He has certificates in Regulatory Impact Analysis (College of Europe, 2007), Project Management (University of Johannesburg, 2002) and Commercial Mediation (University of Cape Town, 2019).