Group One | Guy Hoffman SC's farewell tea highlights

On 9 February 2024, Group One hosted a tea in honour of one of our most senior and founding members Guy Hoffman SC, fondly known as “Hoffs” or “Hoffie” to his friends, to mark his retirement after a remarkable 51 years at the Bar, during which the Group's other founding members, SCA Justice Sharise Weiner, Chris Loxton SC and Dennis Fine SC made fond remarks about Guy.
Guy was the last member to be admitted to the Johannesburg Bar without having to fulfill the requirement of pupillage. He has been in practice for over half a century since January 1973 and has had a large commercial practice.
In his remarks, Guy said that, compared to when he began his career at the Bar when it had been white male dominated, he was pleased that he was leaving the Bar a more integrated, inclusive, and representative institution where briefs are largely given on merit as opposed to race or gender.
Guy has served on the Bar Council as both a junior and as a silk, during which times he served as chairperson of the Professional and the Fees sub-committees. He has been involved in advocacy training from the very earliest days and continues to teach advocacy and also lecture pupil advocates.
Guy was Dikgang Moseneke DCJ’s pupil-master and he bears kind mention in the Deputy Chief Justice’s autobiography, firstly, as one of the ‘tutors’ together with, amongst others, Marumo Moerane SC and Arthur Chaskalson CJ to whom the autobiography is dedicated; and that Guy ‘enjoyed one of the largest motion court commercial practices in town’ and that Moseneke DCJ ‘lived with him in the opposed and unopposed motion court hearings, nearly from Monday to Friday’.