AI is creating an unexpected opportunity for South African employment lawyers

There is an interesting shift taking place in the UK legal market, and it is beginning to create opportunities for employment lawyers in South Africa.

The UK’s Employment Tribunal system has existed for many years. In broad terms, its purpose will be familiar to South African employment lawyers: it provides an accessible forum for resolving disputes between employees and employers and is designed so that individuals do not necessarily need legal representation.

Think CCMA rather than High Court, although the systems are obviously not identical.

What has changed is the volume and complexity of what is coming through the system

In 2025/26, the number of single Employment Tribunal claims received increased by 39%. By the end of March 2026, there were 64,000 open single claims, an increase of 55% in a year.

And AI appears to be adding another dimension. Employees who previously might have struggled to formulate a grievance, identify a potential cause of action or prepare tribunal documents can now ask ChatGPT or another generative AI tool to help them.

That is positive from an access-to-justice perspective. But there is a flip side.

UK employment lawyers are increasingly reporting AI-assisted grievances, claims, applications and correspondence that are significantly longer and more complex than they might previously have been. In some instances, a relatively straightforward workplace dispute can generate pages of legal argument, multiple allegations and a substantial amount of correspondence that somebody on the employer’s side has to work through and respond to.

The technology may have made it easier to generate employment law work. It has not made that work disappear.

This is where things become particularly interesting for South Africa

For large employers dealing with multiple claims, the result is a resourcing problem. It makes little commercial sense for every document, chronology, initial assessment or routine tribunal step to be handled by an expensive senior UK employment lawyer.

That is where things become particularly interesting for South Africa. There is a growing opportunity to use experienced South African employment lawyers as part of the delivery model supporting UK employment practices and their corporate clients.

South African employment lawyers are accustomed to high volumes of workplace disputes, hearings, unfair dismissal claims, discrimination matters, disciplinary processes and the procedural demands of the CCMA and Labour Court.

The substantive law is different, and UK law training and supervision are obviously required. But many of the underlying skills are remarkably transferable.

Investigation, issue identification, chronologies, evidence assessment, drafting, case management, preparing matters for hearing. And, perhaps most importantly, exercising judgement about what actually matters in an employment dispute.

A new export opportunity for South African legal talent

International firms are already responding to the problem by rethinking how tribunal work is delivered. Pinsent Masons, for example, recently launched an enhanced Employment Tribunal offering combining its UK employment expertise with generative AI and managed legal services resources, specifically in response to increasing claims volumes.

I suspect we are going to see much more of this. And it creates another interesting export opportunity for South African legal talent.

Mavens is currently assisting with the search for South African employment lawyers who can work within these kinds of international delivery models.

We are particularly interested in speaking to lawyers with strong employment litigation experience, including those accustomed to running matters through the CCMA and Labour Court, who would be interested in applying those skills in an international environment.

For some South African employment lawyers, the next interesting career opportunity might not involve practising South African employment law at all. It might involve helping solve a problem that AI has just helped create 9,000 kilometres away.