Going for dream job

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there, or so the old adage goes.

Securing a job, any job, is a haphazard affair, but three young lawyers have proved that if you know exactly what you want, you can get it.

“I always wanted to be a lawyer, for as long as I can remember,” Paula De Azevedo said. “Now I am an equity director of one of East London’s iconic legal firms.”

Azevedo joined Bate Chubb in an unusual fashion.

“I phoned them up and said I wanted to join the firm. I really liked the Bate Chubb culture. We met and I became the first externally appointed director in over 30 years.”

Bates recently announced the appointment of two other new directors, Bantu Mazingi and Castro Macozoma. The 113year-old firm now has four of its eight directors under 35 years old, three of whom are black.

De Azevedo, born in East London, studied at Rhodes/Fort Hare, obtaining a BA and LLB. She spent a year in Germany doing a master’s degree and is chair of the SA Tax Board.

Mazingi and Macozoma said they came up through the ranks and “we are now directors, and we are here on merit”.