Paul Hoffman was born in 1950 in Johannesburg on the wrong side of town. He read for the BA LLB degrees while completing articles of clerkship with the legal firm Bowens. In 1975 he relocated to Cape Town and worked for various firms of attorneys until he was called to the Cape Bar in 1980. In 1995 President Nelson Mandela conferred silk (senior counsel) status on him and he served as an acting judge on the Cape Bench at the request of three successive judges president. In 2006 he left the Bar to start the Centre for Constitutional Rights and since 2009 he has been pursuing his passion for constitutionalism as one of the six directors of Accountability Now. He still lives in Cape Town, where he takes his dogs on long beach walks and practices yoga while not exacting accountability.
