The Legal Practice Council (LPC) has been ordered to admit an attorney after initially seeking to block her admission due to a plagiarism case during her university studies and her dismissal from a previous job for falling asleep during a night shift.
The LPC barred Malesela Sharlotte Sebatsana from being admitted after disclosing that during her fourth year, while studying her law degree at the North West University, she was charged with plagiarism in one of the assignments.
She also revealed that in 2016, while working for the National Health Laboratory Services (NHLS) as a medical technologist, she faced disciplinary charges because she fell asleep during night shift. She was subsequently dismissed in 2016.
In her application, at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, Sebatsana said she committed plagiarism when she was working on a group assignment in 2019.
She explained that the plagiarism charge arose because, due to a looming deadline, her group decided to divide the assignment: each member completed a different question, and then they exchanged answers, which led to the plagiarism allegations.
