PALU is a dual membership forum, i.e. for individual African lawyers and lawyers' associations, with the following categories:
(United States Dollars)
Individual (Annual) Membership: $100 for the first year, and $50 per year thereafter;
Life Membership: a once-off payment of $1,000;
Special Endowment Membership: a once-off payment of $10,000;
Institutional Membership for Bar Associations and Law Societies (collectively called 'lawyers associations') from across Africa and its diaspora, with an annual fee which ranges from $1,000 to $2,000, determined by the size of the association.
In order to boost the total numbers as well as diversity of our members (individual and institutional) and also to scale up our membership services and our outreach, we have adopted a range of new strategies, which include: -
We are rolling out a new Membership Engagement System (MES), which will make it easier for members to join PALU; join its various Committees, Task Forces, Working Groups and Fora; interact with like-minded members in dedicated and safe online spaces; link these interactions with their own social media as well as with PALU social media; be able to pay their membership, conference registration and other dues online, and to sign up for PALU Conferences, Workshops, Seminars and other events online; and generally be able to interact with the PALU Leadership, Secretariat and fellow members quickly through their phones, tablets, and computers.
We have embarked on special campaigns to our Arab-, French- and Portuguese-speaking constituencies, which ultimately led more Bar Associations to be active in PALU, including nominating and voting for candidates for election into the Board. As a result, out of nine elective positions on our Board for the period 2018-2021, we have one Arabic member, one Francophone member and one Lusophone member, making this the most linguistically diverse PALU Board to date.
We have increased the opportunities of becoming a PALU member by offering attractive discounts for those registering for our Annual Conferences. This has led to more participants seizing this opportunity, and also to more of them being repeat participants in subsequent conferences.
We have lowered our institutional membership fees, to be more responsive to the differences in size and financial situation of African lawyers' associations. While this lowers our income in the short term, it attracts more institutional members Members of the Secretariat Team hard at work during a joint event co-convened by PALU, IRRI and IJP, in Arusha, Tanzania to be active in the organisation and pay their reduced dues consistently, which has a positive long-term impact on the organisation.
As the new MES becomes fully operational, we will embark on a new Membership Recruitment Drive, and encourage more members to be active in our various Committees, Task Forces, Working Groups and Fora. This will drive more value for our members, whether practising, in-house, in government, in diplomatic service, or with international or intergovernmental organisations.