We are committed to complying with all laws, rules, codes and standards that apply to Michalsons. We take our responsibility to comply seriously. It is essential that we “eat our own dog food” as the saying goes. We use our legal solutions or services to ensure we comply. After all, Michalsons provides blueprints for several compliance programmes. For this reason, Michalsons has a Compliance Management System (CMS) called Morris – after John’s golden retriever called Morris.

We take compliance seriously.

The Michalsons Morris Compliance Management System

Our Morris CMS is how we achieve our compliance outcomes.

  1. Learn about our compliance responsibilities.
  2. Ensure our employees understand these responsibilities.
  3. Ensure we incorporate requirements into business processes.
  4. Review operations to ensure we carry out responsibilities and meet requirements.
  5. Takes corrective action and updates materials as necessary.

Components of the Michalsons Morris Compliance Management System

Director and management oversight

John Giles, the sole director of Michalsons Giles Inc, is ultimately responsible for developing and administering a CMS that ensures compliance with applicable laws, rules, codes and standards. John demonstrates commitment to maintaining an effective CMS by taking action.

  • Demonstrating clear and unequivocal expectations about compliance, not only within the institution but also with third-party providers.
  • Adopting clear policy statements.
  • Appointing a compliance officer with authority and accountability.
  • Allocating resources to compliance functions commensurate with the level and complexity of the institution’s operations.
  • Conducting periodic compliance audits.
  • Providing for recurrent reports by the compliance officer to the director.

John has designated Nicci as the compliance officer for the Michalsons Financial intelligence risk management compliance programme (RMCP). There is a compliance committee for confidentiality, security and privacy.

Morris compliance programme

The Michalsons compliance programme includes a number of components.

  1. Policies and procedures. Michalsons has a number of policies and procedures written in plain language. They are discussed and agreed by all employees of Michalsons. For example, we have an Anti Bribery and Corruption Policy setting out our policy on this important issue.
  2. Training. Michalsons has an internal programme called “Practice Law like a Rockstar” that all employees participate in. Michalsons holds live sessions roughly every second week to discuss and learn about various topics, including compliance topics. We conduct further compliance awareness training through questionnaires and discussions in team meetings.
  3. Monitoring. We actively survey operations to identify areas of non-compliance. We perform swift corrective action and remediation to prevent recurrence. We regularly review our policies and procedures, assess training effectiveness and compare real practices with external disclosures. We monitor compliance efforts in real-time and amend our Morris CMS if necessary.
  4. Client complaint response. We ask clients to give us feedback (automatically through our billing system) after each piece of work is delivered. We take all feedback seriously and use it to improve our services going forward. If we fall short of doing great work, please tell the relevant person directly or you can submit a complaint. John handles any complaints promptly and evaluates complaint trends to identify systematic compliance problems.

Compliance audits

Michalsons does both internal and external audits.

  • An external accountant audits the Michalsons trust account annually when Michalsons uses its trust account.
  • A verification agency audits Michalsons BBBEE compliance annually.
  • Michalsons has been audited by the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (known as the FIC Act or FICA) and was given a clean audit.
  • Michalsons has been audited by the National Department of Labour and was given a clean audit.

The audit findings are reported directly to John in the form of both verbal and written compliance audit reports.

Some laws that apply to Michalsons

You can read about how we comply with laws related to privacy, data protection, security, confidentiality, access to information, and anti-bribery and corruption in our trust centre.

Complying with legal practice laws

The laws that regulate legal practice in South Africa have changed significantly in the last few years. We can’t practice law without knowing and complying with the laws that regulate us. We respect the law and always try to comply with it.

Conflicts of interest

We are aware of the dangers of conflicts of interest and follow all applicable laws, rules and codes. For example, we comply with paragraphs 58 and 59 of the Code of Conduct for all Legal Practitioners.

Financial intelligence risk management

Michalsons has a Financial intelligence risk management compliance programme (RMCP).