Checkmate or Collapse: Peter Barnard on Strategy, Construction Law, and the Business of Practice

^{Construction law is chess with concrete stakes: one careless step, and the board cracks.}

^{Enter Peter Barnard, a lawyer who doesn't wait for the dust to settle; he moves with it.}

^{As a partner at Cox Yeats, Barnard has built a practice that spans Africa, handling disputes, procurement battles, and tender appeals. In tandem, he chairs the Joint Building Contracts Committee (JBCC), helping write the rules he later uses to win arguments. He knows the game so well; he put it in writing: Practical Guide to Administering Construction Contracts.}

^{Recognised by Best Lawyers South Africa and leading a Legal 500-ranked construction team, he’s the lawyer people call when the paint’s dry but tempers aren’t.}

♟️ The Opening Gambit: Entering Construction Law

^{Barnard never planned on construction law. A few files landed on his desk during articles, each one dense and designed to ruin a weekend. Most would have left them until Monday. He took that as a challenge. He found rhythm in the paperwork, logic in the noise. He won. Clients came back. Bigger ones followed.} 

^{“Construction law,” says Barnard, “runs on controlled chaos.”}

^{Most disputes never reach court; they are settled in arbitration instead. With no neat line of precedent, Barnard draws from a patchwork of English, Irish, and Australian rulings stitched together to build a foundation.}

^{It’s a field that rewards range and versatility. Every dispute calls for a lawyer who can think like an engineer, a quantity surveyor, and an analyst all at once.}

^{Barnard learned to do just that; what began as chance became a niche. Strategy turned out to be his edge. Unpredictability, his favourite opening move.}

🚧 The Knight’s Gambit: Chaos on the Ground 

^{Chess has rules that everyone agrees on. Construction has players who invent their own.} 

^{Barnard highlights the so-called construction mafia: once local forums meant to ensure community involvement, they have now become gate-side negotiators demanding jobs, subcontracts, or straight cash. With unemployment pushing 60% in some areas, desperation becomes currency. On a recent Eastern Cape project, Barnard says the only winning move was foresight: bring the community in early, define the roles, and avoid a standoff on-site.}

^{Barnard’s real frustration isn’t with the people showing up at the gate; it’s the ones hiding behind the glass. The government announces infrastructure budgets by the billion, but the payments move like wet cement. Right now, over 140,000 invoices worth R18 billion sit unpaid, while another R43 billion was paid so late it might as well have been a condolence letter. It’s a masterclass in circular economics: when the money doesn’t move, neither does anything else.}

^{The mafia disrupts the board. Government non-payment clears the table.}

♞ The Middle Game: Law as a Business

^{Non-payment cripples projects. The same principle holds for law firms.} 

^{Barnard is one of the few lawyers who talk frankly about money:}

^{“Once you graduate, the job isn’t about knowing the law, it’s about selling it.”}

The 90-Second Reality Check

• ^{Target: Your firm wants 1,600 billable hours a year. Sounds reasonable.}

• ^{The catch: “Billable” ≠ “time in the office.” Ten hours at your desk might give you six on a timesheet. The rest evaporates into admin, chasing clients, and meetings.}

• ^{Do the maths: To hit 1,600 billables, you’ll actually work closer to 2,200 real hours. That’s your evenings, weekends, and personality gone.}

• ^{Twist: Hours mean nothing if there’s no work to bill. Files don’t appear out of thin air. Clients don’t wait while you’re “away from keyboard.” They click the next lawyer on Google.}

• ^{The cruel punchline: You can do the work, record the hours, send the invoice…but unless the client pays, it’s all Monopoly money. The timesheet says ‘heroic effort.’ The bank balance says ‘nice try.’}

^{It’s not cynicism; it’s survival. Law is a business, and time is the only stock you’ve got. Barnard runs a team of fourteen lawyers, which means the real challenge is keeping the pipeline full so everyone can bill.} 

♛ The Endgame: Checkmate and the Cost of Play

^{If the business of law sounds brutal, that’s because it is. Barnard calls it what it is: “an all-consuming mistress.” There’s no such thing as a good lawyer part-time.}

^{It isn’t nine-to-five. It follows you home, floods your WhatsApp, wakes you at midnight. Treat it like just another job, and it’ll eat you alive.} 

^{Too many young lawyers walk into interviews promising, “I know it’ll be hard, but I’ll work hard.” Weeks later, they’re gone, swallowed by late nights and relentless files.}

^{Self-awareness matters. Some live for fifteen-hour days and the climb to Partner. Others choose balance and smaller paycheques. Neither path is wrong, but drifting without choosing is.}

^{Barnard’s warning is blunt: decide early. Know who you are, and what you want.} 

^{The game is not kind … and the mistress always collects.}