A self-paced, assessed course for attorneys, advocates, candidate attorneys and legal academics: what these tools actually are, where they fail, and how to use them inside your professional duties. Built on the South African cases, the Code of Conduct and POPIA. Earn your certificate as a newcomer, or watch for the Advanced stream, launching soon for practitioners who already work with AI and want expert depth.
South African courts have ordered costs de bonis propriis and referred practitioners to the LPC over AI-fabricated authorities. No new rules were needed: candour, competence, confidentiality, fees and supervision reached the conduct comfortably. Competence with these tools is the only durable protection.
Parker, Mavundla and Northbound Processing, the Code of Conduct duties, POPIA's operator and transborder rules, and the withdrawn national AI policy. Your law, your courts, your regulator.
Six scenario questions per module at an 80 percent pass mark, a ten-question capstone at eight of ten, and two certificates that are earned by passing, never bought.
CuraPraxis is authored by Dr Nicolene Steyn, a legal-technical AI expert, under her full professional identity. Provenance you can check, in a market full of anonymous content.
The five-step verification discipline, confidentiality-safe patterns, honest billing, firm governance and agentic supervision: habits you practise inside the course and keep at your desk.
Each module runs 35 to 45 minutes: plain-language lessons, inline practice, a desk exercise, role-specific notes and a scenario quiz. Module 1 is free in full.
The Core certificate covers modules 1 to 8. The Advanced certificate covers all thirteen, capstone included. Each carries a signed ID that anyone can verify in seconds.
No subscription. Lifetime access to the tier you buy, including every future update of the course.
By paying you accept the Terms of Use, including the refund policy, and performance begins immediately.
By paying you accept the Terms of Use, including the refund policy, and performance begins immediately.
The same thirteen subjects rebuilt at expert depth for practitioners who already work with AI: full case autopsies from the primary sources, practical memorandum assessments marked against professional criteria, and an Advanced certificate to match. The current course remains the right starting point for newcomers.
Dr Nicolene Steyn is a legal-technical AI expert and the author of every module: senior law lecturer at Wits, Chair of the Wits School of Law AI Committee, invited member of the National Working Group on the South African AI Strategy, and Fellow of the Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery (MIND) Institute. The course carries her full professional identity because provenance matters: you are trusting this material with your practice. Read the full profile on the about page.
Because South African courts have already ruled. In Mavundla (2025) fabricated citations ended in costs de bonis propriis and an LPC referral; in Northbound Processing (2025) a paid legal AI tool produced fictitious authorities and counsel were referred despite an accepted apology; and in July 2026 the LSSA publicly warned that fabricated citations are serious misconduct with sanctions up to striking off. The duties of candour, competence, confidentiality and supervision already reach AI use. Competence with the tools is the only durable protection, whether you use them daily or are deciding whether to use them at all.
Every South African offering we could find is a live, attendance-only session: you watch, you leave, nothing is tested. CuraPraxis is self-paced and assessed. Each module ends in a scenario quiz at an 80 percent pass mark, the capstone requires eight of ten, and the certificates are issued only on passing. It is also deeper: thirteen modules covering the casebook, verification, POPIA, working methods, agentic AI, governance and billing, at a fraction of the price of a single cohort course.
Payment unlocks modules; passing earns certificates. The Core certificate is issued when you have passed the quizzes for modules 1 to 8, each at 80 percent or better, on the Core or Professional tier. The Advanced certificate is issued when you have passed all thirteen, with the capstone at eight of ten, on the Professional tier. Attempts are unlimited and your best score is kept. Each certificate carries a unique, cryptographically signed ID that anyone can verify on our verification page.
No, and we say so plainly. No compulsory continuing professional development scheme was in force for South African legal practitioners as at mid-2026, so there is no CPD credit to award, and the certificates are certificates of completion from an independent course, unaccredited by any regulator or university. If a compulsory scheme arrives, we will pursue whatever recognition then exists. What the certificate attests is that you passed a demanding, verifiable assessment on this material.
Very little, by design. There are no accounts: your progress lives in your own browser and never reaches our servers. We hold personal information only when a certificate is issued: the name you choose to put on it, handled under our Privacy Notice and POPIA. Nothing you do inside the course, answers, scores, attempts, is transmitted to us. A course about confidentiality should be built this way.
Progress saves automatically in the browser you use and is there when you return, even weeks later. Two honest caveats: it stays in that browser, so it does not follow you across devices, and clearing browser data erases it. Your certificate is different: once issued it is permanent, and its ID verifies forever, so keep a note of the ID.
The whole course weighs less than a minute of video. After your first visit it is cached on your device and works with connectivity off: lessons, practice and quizzes included. You need a connection only to pay, to claim a certificate, and for someone to verify one.
Module 1 is free in full, no card needed. Core (modules 1 to 8) is a once-off R350; Professional (all thirteen) is a once-off R599; upgrading from Core to Professional is R249. Payment is processed securely by PayFast. There is no subscription, and updates are included for as long as the course exists.
Yes, and possibly especially. A considered decision to abstain is a competent professional position, and this course gives you the grounds to make it: what the tools do, where they fail, what your colleagues and opponents are filing, and what to check in the other side's papers. Module 8's discipline of checking citations protects you whether or not you ever type a prompt. Abstention chosen from understanding is a position; abstention from unfamiliarity is a risk.
Write to curapraxis@proton.me and a human will answer.
This course teaches professional care, so we practise it. Both documents open in a new tab and take a few minutes to read.
Also available: the Disclaimer and the PAIA Manual. The course is education about the law; it is never legal advice for a matter.
Each module carries practice notes tailored to your branch of the profession. Choose one; you can change it later by revisiting this page.