LawExplorer’s South African Statutory Database is an independently developed and maintained database of statutes and sub-ordinate instruments impacting organisations (i.e. the acts and regulations which would normally fall within the organisation’s Regulatory Universe).

It includes all effective regulatory instruments (not just regulations and notices) under the Acts listed in the database such as circulars, directives, guidance notes, interpretation notes, codes and standards. The Statutory Database is updated daily ensuring constant access to updated legislation.

The Statutory Database is integrated into other LawExplorer products, ensuring that any amendment to legislation is taken into consideration in “downstream” products such as Regulatory Universes and Compliance Risk Management Plans.

The Sentinel South Africa service supports both listed and unlisted companies and other entities within the private and public sectors. Our content is tailor-made to the industry in which each of our clients operate – therefore clients receive only such regulatory information relevant to their specific nature of business and respective industry in which they operate.

Through Sentinel South Africa, we provide our clients with alerts on regulatory developments published by national government departments, provincial legislatures, municipalities (bylaws) and industry regulators which we monitor on a full-time basis. Clients receive plain language executive summaries in alert-format, together with the underlying regulatory instrument shortly after publication, on their customisable online Sentinel portal. Part of the service includes alerting clients to legislation in the pipeline, such as bills, draft regulations, issue papers, discussion papers, green papers, white papers and the progress of bills through Parliament.

Clients are informed of dates for comment and/or public hearings. To limit information overload clients can choose which instruments they wish to track in this way. As part of our Sentinel South Africa service, we provide clients with a Regulatory Universe in which all acts directly or indirectly impacting their business are identified and updated regularly. Objectives of each act, how it applies to the client’s business, organisational areas affected, penalties, and high-level risk ratings, are provided.

Content of the Sentinel International service is tailor-made to the industry in which each of our clients operates. This means clients receive only such regulatory information relevant to the nature of their specific business and respective industry in which they operate. Through Sentinel International we provide our clients with alerts covering new in-country regulatory developments. New legislation (acts and regulations) and other regulatory notices are published in (among other) the official Government Gazette of most countries. Gazettes are processed within 24-48 hours of receipt at LawExplorer’s South Africa office.

Clients are provided with alerts along with the relevant source document on their customisable online Sentinel International portal. In addition to the above, as part of our Sentinel International service, clients have the option of contracting our service at an additional fee for the compilation of a Regulatory Universe which outlines all existing acts (statutes) that impact their organisation. LawExplorer engages in-country legal experts to identify all Acts that apply to a specific industry in that country (directly or indirectly) e.g. financial institutions, retailers, mines etc. on which an editorial review is performed before submission to the client.

Clients can further subscribe to receiving updates to such Regulatory Universe. LawExplorer currently covers 16 African countries (Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Eswatini, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe) as well as other jurisdictions (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Guernsey, Jersey and Isle of Man). LawExplorer also monitors and reports on a number of international quasi-regulators. Coverage of foreign jurisdictions is expanded depending on client demand, the establishment of reliable in-country support and the cost-benefit ratio.

Media Watch provides clients with a daily lunchtime newspaper monitoring service. Critical current affairs relating to legal, business and economic news in South Africa, are succinctly summarised in bite-size plain language “snapshots” along with a link to the online news article.

Media Watch only covers news that could be relevant to our clients’ decision-making for that day and aims to protect them from unnecessary information overload by filtering and bite-sizing the news.

LawExplorer monitors and analyses new South African case law and provides summaries of judgments that our team of subject matter experts deem as important judgments.

Importance is determined by having regard to the potential impact on an organisation’s internal and external operations, i.e. we consider whether the judgment directly or indirectly impacts on internal/external operations and whether the Company Secretary, Legal or Compliance functions would be expected by their clients to be aware of it. To warrant publication of an alert, a judgment must furthermore introduce a risk management requirement necessitating functions like Legal or Compliance to warn business to take either preventative or pro-active steps.

Case Law Alerts indicate where and how a judgment could impact on an organisation and high level recommendations regarding management of legal risk are made. LawExplorer endeavours to obtain access to judgements long before they are published.

Risk Manager, a compliance risk management solution, enables clients to effectively manage their Compliance Risk Management Plans (CRMPs) for relevant high-risk South African legislation impacting the organisation. This functionality enables clients to do the following: assign risk weightings to compliance requirements, create or capture control measures, assign responsibilities and tasks, and draw reports, which can be used to facilitate risk-based monitoring.

LawExplorer provides baseline CRMP content of a substantial number of pieces of South African legislation core to any organisation. Furthermore, it also facilitates clients building their own CRMPs on the Risk Manager system, in the Build-your-Own module.

Depending on their subscription, clients can benefit from LawExplorer ensuring that the legislative content of CRMPs on the Risk Manager system (whether purchased or built by the client) is maintained and updated in the event of any regulatory change. Hereby, the management of risks inherent to regulation and legislation is always based on prevailing- and up to date information, ensuring client peace of mind.

Retention Guide is an online, hosted database, outlining the mandatory record retention and destruction requirements found in statutes and regulations applicable to South African organisations.

This guide is frequently updated to reflect all the legislative changes that impact on record retention, thus, ensuring clients do not fall foul of prescribed regulatory retention periods. In this regard we review on average more than 2000 new regulatory instruments annually.