Capacity: Attorney
Admission as an attorney: January 1987
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: White
Date of Birth: September 1964
Qualifications: BProc (1986) (University of the Free State), Diploma in Human Rights (1995) (University of Johannesburg)
Key Judgments
- Lasertek Payment Solutions v Electronic Connect [2025] ZAGPJHC 243; [2025] 2 All SA 474 (GJ)
- Kriel NO obo Minor Child v Road Accident Fund (12291/2020) [2024] ZAGPJHC 852 (27 August 2024)
- Emfuleni Local Municipality v Builders Advancement Services CC (A5047/11) [2012] ZAGPJHC 39 (23 March 2012) — as instructing attorney
- Khumalo v Len Smith Investment Holdings CC (LCC175/2016) [2020] ZALCC 1 (Land Court) — as instructing attorney
Candidate Biography | Updated August 2026:
Mr Jan Petrus Allen is an Attorney at Allen and Associates.
Allen runs his own Gauteng-based law firm and has served as an acting judge of the Gauteng Division of the High Court.
Allen’s route into the law was an unusually early one. In his JSC application, he recounts starting as a candidate attorney at Vermaak and Dennis in Bloemfontein in November 1982, days after writing his final matric examination, and being admitted as an attorney in January 1987, at the youngest age then recorded in South Africa, according to Allen.
He holds a BProc from the University of the Free State (1986) and a Diploma in Human Rights from the University of Johannesburg (1995).
After compulsory military service, first as a legal adviser in Correctional Services and then as a military law officer in the South African Defence Force, Allen went on to work at Blakes Attorneys, briefly handled Road Accident Fund claims for President Insurance, and then opened his own firm, Allen and Associates, on 1 March 1993. The practice offers a broad general service spanning banking, civil, criminal, estates, conveyancing, insurance and commercial law. He was admitted to appear in the High Court in 2009.
As a practitioner, Allen has appeared in a range of matters. He acted as instructing attorney in Emfuleni Local Municipality v Builders Advancement Services CC, and points in his application to constitutional-language litigation in De Jager v SABC, where the court held that the state need not broadcast every utterance in all official languages but must adopt a policy of their equal treatment. He also lists successful work opposing land invasions and spoliation applications over RDP housing on behalf of the Emfuleni municipality.
He has since sat as an acting judge of the Gauteng Division in Johannesburg and Pretoria across some 56 weeks, carrying a heavy and varied load ranging from civil trials, opposed and unopposed motions, urgent court, civil and criminal appeals in the Full Court and Full Bench, reviews and petitions. His reported judgments include the Kriel NO obo Minor Child matter, in which he assessed a minor’s damages and later dismissed the Fund’s application for leave to appeal.
He also mentors law students through the South African Chapter of the International Association of Women Judges’ Gauteng student mentorship programme.
He comes before the JSC with an uncommonly heavy recent acting load to point to; the question will be whether that, and a lifetime in general practice, has prepared him to finally be robed as a Judge of the Gauteng High Court.
The question for the JSC will be whether that heavy diet of foreclosure and motion work, together with his commitment to pro bono sitting, makes the case for a permanent seat.