Faathima Asmall

Faathima is RW Attorney’s Managing Director and heads the Employment and Employee Benefits Practice at RW Attorneys. She specialises in Employment Law, Employee Benefits Law, Pension Funds Law, Regulatory Law and Tax Litigation.

Faathima has extensive experience of 19 years in all the above areas, and also has right of appearance in the High Courts, the Labour Court and the Labour Appeal Court. Faathima also represents clients at all the labour forums, including the CCMA and various Sector Bargaining Councils. Faathima also presents value added training on various aspects of Employment Law, on legislation amendments and case law updates, relevant to clients in the workplace.

Faathima became a director in 2008 and since then headed the employment law department. From 2016, Faathima continued to grow the Labour law department at the firm and also contributed to the strategic development of the firm.

In 2018, Faathima together with her former partner Andre Bloem, started an association with a solicitor in Mauritius, to establish RW Maurice, a company which assists with corporate and residential migration, buying and selling of properties between Mauritius and South Africa to assist South Africans who are looking to semi or completely emigrate.

In 2019, Faathima established and became a director of RW Risk Solutions, which is a forensics company affiliated with the law firm offering fraud, advisory, risk and governance expertise.

Faathima was appointed Chairperson of the Board in 2019 and then Managing Partner (CEO) in January 2022. Faathima leads RW Attorneys as the first black and first female managing partner in the 135 years of the firm’s existence.

Faathima is passionate about service excellence, transferring skills to junior attorneys, training candidate attorneys, motivating and mentoring young professionals, advancing gender equality and transformation in the legal profession.

Faathima is also the Employment Equity Officer, Risk officer and Public Officer at the firm.

Faathima was 1st runner up Woza Award for Labour Law 2019. WOZA, which is the Women in Law South Africa platform that celebrates and recognises the achievements of South African Women in the legal profession.

The challenges that Faathima faces are finding the balance between being an exceptional attorney, managing and leading the firm strategically and skilling RW’s employees who are the true stars of the firm’s success. It takes a lot of hard work, extra hours, dedication and ambition to embrace these challenges but Faathima takes it one day at a time, one task at a time, to help realise the vision of RW Attorneys which is to continue to build and strengthen the RW Attorney brand for another 135 years!