Josette Manuel

Josette Manuel is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa, a member of the Legal Practice Council and an accredited commercial mediator. She is a litigation partner at Shepstone & Wylie Attorneys in Pietermaritzburg, where she heads the litigation department at branch level and has served as branch manager since 2022.

Her practice covers general civil and commercial litigation, family law, liquidations and sequestrations, debt recovery, breach of contract, leases and evictions, deceased estates and trusts, and commercial drafting. She has appeared regularly in the High and Lower Courts and brings that experience into the mediation room.

Josette holds an LLB from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a Postgraduate Diploma in Risk Management from UNISA. She completed civil mediation training through LSSA-LEAD in 2023 and gained full commercial mediation accreditation through Conflict Dynamics in 2025.

Since 2019 she has served the Legal Practice Council as a chairperson, committee member, investigator, mediator and fees assessor, and she volunteers on the LPC and ProBono.org help desks. She is also a mentor in the Women in Business programme and the firm's candidate legal practitioner programme.