VerifiedAn LLB does not make you a lawyer. It is the first of four steps, and the three that follow are where most of the cost and nearly all of the attrition happen. If you are looking for funding, fund the whole route, not just the degree.
For the full list of funders that pay for a law qualification, see our law bursaries page. This page is about how you qualify and which funders are attached to that route.
The four steps
- The LLB. Four years straight from school, or two years after a relevant first degree.
- Practical vocational training. Articles of clerkship at a firm if you are becoming an attorney, or pupillage at a bar if you are becoming an advocate. This is the year that is paid badly or not at all.
- Competency-based examinations. Set and run by the Legal Practice Council.
- Admission and enrolment. Admitted by the High Court, then enrolled with the Legal Practice Council.
The Legal Practice Council is a national statutory body established under section 4 of the Legal Practice Act, No 28 of 2014. It regulates attorneys, advocates and candidate legal practitioners, sets the norms and standards for admission, and runs both the practical vocational training framework and the competency examinations. Confirmed 23 September 2026 on the LPC site; it is on 010 001 8500.
Why the training year is the real problem
Candidate attorney salaries are low, and pupillage at the bar is usually unpaid for a year while you also pay bar fees. Students who fund the degree and then cannot afford the training year are the ones who do not make it into practice.
Plan for that year while you are still an undergraduate. Ask any firm that offers you a bursary whether articles are attached to it, because a bursary that leads into paid articles is worth far more than a larger one that does not.
Law firm bursaries
The commercial firms fund students they intend to take on as candidate attorneys, which is why these are the most valuable awards in this field even when the amounts are not the largest:
Ask each one the same question: does the bursary carry a contractual offer of articles, and on what terms?
Profession and public sector funders
- The Legal Practitioners Fidelity Fund bursary comes from the profession’s own fund and is the most directly relevant scheme for someone intent on practising.
- The LegalWise bursary funds law alongside accounting, human resource management and information science.
- The Gauteng Provincial Treasury and the City of Cape Town fund law because they employ legal advisers.
- The NUMSA bursary funds members’ dependants across fields including law.
The Allan Gray Orbis Fellowship and the Canon Collins and University of London distance learning scholarships both fund law within wider programmes.
Attorney or advocate
Both are legal practitioners under the Legal Practice Act and both are regulated by the same council, but the training route differs. Attorneys do articles at a firm and can be funded by that firm. Advocates do pupillage at a bar, which no firm pays for, so the advocate route needs more of your own money up front.
If cost is the binding constraint, the attorney route is the fundable one.
See also our law bursaries directory and postgraduate bursaries for an LLM.