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including arranging for security personnel to be equipped with metal detectors,
weapons and three-way radios, and to be trained in how to use them.
The job was not especially challenging but taught her many lessons, including
“not to be a smart alec”.
She remained at the Department of Justice until the end of 1994. The
ordinary path at the end of such a stint was to continue with the department
and be reassigned to the role of prosecutor. However, Daleen wanted to
obtain a further law degree and not be forced to do so by correspondence
course, as would have been the case had she chosen to remain with the
department.
Therefore, Daleen changed employers and commenced work with what
is now known as the Road Accident Fund (then the Multilateral Motor Vehicle
Accident Fund), which is South Africa’s equivalent of the Insurance Corporation
of British Columbia. She started as a claims handler, and in that
role she developed considerable experience with negotiations, pre-trial
work and instructing counsel. The work was fascinating, involving not only
personal injury and tort law, but also interesting issues related to planning
and how benefits provided through the fund should be offset against benefits
available through private insurance, which existed alongside it. Daleen
met her husband, Giles, while he worked as a claims handler at the Road
Accident Fund as well. He regularly came to her office to chat on the pretext
that a case that had come to him fell within the “double insurance” category
that she handled (when in fact it usually did not!).
Daleen moved on from being a claims handler to a claims manager, and
at the age of 25 came to have eight people working for her. She did not enjoy
that managerial role, at such a young age, at the time. During these years,
she also studied for her LL.B., which she obtained from the University of
Pretoria in 1997.
Daleen left the Road Accident Fund in late 1998 and joined Vista University,
at its Mamelodi campus just northeast of Pretoria, as a lecturer. Over
the next several years, she combined academic studies, lecturing, consulting
work in the insurance sector and work as an advocate. She obtained her
LL.M. from the University of Pretoria in 2000. In 2001, she was admitted as
an advocate of the High Court, Transvaal Provincial Division, and completed
the national bar exam. She co-wrote what became a leading text on
evolving insurance regulation in South Africa as it pertains to brokers, and
she came often to be enlisted by insurance companies to check insurance
policies for regulatory compliance, to improve their business models and to
present on plain language drafting and how to deal fairly with customers.
In turn, she relayed the knowledge she gained as a consultant to her stu-