The vision of “A BRAVE NEW BAR” - MAHMOUD SAN, NBA PRESIDENT ELECT

NBA 2016 ANNUAL GENERAL CONFERENCE: HIGHLIGHTS OF SHOWCASE SESSION (WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24, 2016).

SETTING STANDARDS: THE FUTURE OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION

SESSION CHAIR - T. J. O. Okpoko SAN, Past President, Nigerian Bar Association

LEAD PRESENTER - A. B. Mahmoud SAN, President-Elect, Nigerian Bar Association

SPEAKERS - 

1. Dr. Koyinsola Ajayi SAN, Olaniwun Ajayi Law Practitioners

2. Muhammed Hassan Liman SAN, Hassan Liman & Co

3. Barbara Omosun, Paul Erokoro & Co

4. Onyechi Ikpeazu SAN, Onyechi Ikpeazu& Co

5. Layi Babatunde SAN,  Layi Babatunde & Co

6. Andrew Odum, NBA, Asaba Branch

7. Ope Olugasa, Managing Director, GIT-LawPavilion

SPECIAL GUEST OF HONOUR - His Excellency, Nyesom Wike, Governor, Rivers State

The Chairman, Chief Okpoko SAN started the session by welcoming the distinguished Speakers and other Conferees and called to the mind of everyone the essentials of the topic at hand which centres on the future and development of the legal profession. In his modulation, he introduced the speakers in no particular order.

A. B. MAHMOUD SAN

He expressed his gratitude to all members of the Bar for being given the opportunity to share his thought on the topic aforementioned. He started by highlighting important sub-topics with respect to the day’s session discourse, these were;
1. The historical evolution of the legal profession
2. The current trends/challenges facing the legal profession
3. The external threats
4. The challenges facing the Nigerian Nation
5. The failure of the legal profession
6. The vision of #ABraveNewBar

The Historical Evolution of the Bar

He ran a brief chronicle on the evolution of the legal profession which dates back to the 19th century particularly in 1862 when the British introduced the court system in England. With respect to Nigeria, what could be deduced from the historical trace were;

• That the 1st indigenous Nigerian lawyer called to the English bar in 1879 was Christopher Alexander Sapara Williams

• That Court system in this country was introduced pursuant to the 1876 Supreme Court Ordinance and amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorate

• That the first Faculty of Law in Nigeria was first built in the University of Ibadan

Accordingly, he stated that presently, we have 40 Law Faculties in Federal Universities, 20 in State Universities and 10 in private Universities. It is important to know that Nigeria produces 6000-7000 Lawyers annually who are trained in these tertiary institutions.

Challenges Facing the Legal Profession

The relative challenges as mentioned are:

• Declining ethical and professional standard
• Declining quality of legal education
• Growing number of lawyers
• Loss of confidence in the legal profession

External Threats

• Globalization
• Increasing inter-connectedness
• Intrusion into the Nigerian legal market (directly and indirectly by foreign law firms) which has posed a major challenge for lawyers in the country
• The obligation of Nigeria as a member of the World Trade organisation (WTO)
• New technologies and New knowledge and skills
• Disruptive legal innovations - Most Universities in Nigeria still do orthodox and less important courses while in other parts of the world, there are new models of legal education and courses
• Disruptive legal innovation in legal services delivery 
• Automation

Challenges facing the Nigerian legal profession

• Poverty
• Corruption
• Over population compared to productivity and GDP reduction
• Inequality
• Youth unemployment
• Internal conflicts (for instance, the insurgency in the North East region, Niger-Delta clash)

Failure of the Legal order

The Nigerian Legal Profession has made huge contributions to national development but failed to achieve basic goals.

The vision of “A BRAVE NEW BAR”

He stated that the vision of the ‘brave new bar’ is basically to create a legal order that will guarantee the right to development for Nigerians. The creation of the brave new bar will be focused on key areas;

• Regulation: In the aspect of regulation, the question to be asked is whether we need a new model of regulation or whether we could modify the already existent regulation model. Thus there is need to interrogate the regulatory architecture of the legal profession to ensure that the required changes are made for the legal profession to move forward.

• Representation: Here, he stated that our focus should be on what the NBA needs to do to ensure that the legal profession is well and adequately represented. He added that the representative role of the NBA needs to be re-engineered in order to bring it up to date with new innovations.

• Public Interest: This entails the need for the NBA to remain courageous in speaking out on national issues and also having a clean judiciary. He finally advised all lawyers especially the senior lawyers to remove the notion that they can get richer in an ailing economy.

MR. OPE OLUGASA

He re-established the need for immediate adoption of ICT as the world has gone global and Nigerian lawyers ought to be attuned to modern technology devices and migrate from the tunnel of analogue modus operandi. His points are presented as follows;

• That LawPavilion is the official ICT partner of the NBA 

• That by virtue of LawPavilion’s ICT services there is the introduction of the NBA mobile App available on android devices, which can be used for the following; Conference Management, Payment of Bar Fees, Download Conference Papers, Manage Conference Sessions, Questions and Polls, Capture Contact Details, Get in touch with other lawyers and much more

• He traced the history of law which dates back to the time where there was inscription of laws on tablet of stones, then to scrolls, books afterwards before the introduction of the computers

• Since inception of the computer, lawyers across the globe have tried to make legal practice easy and fast by putting those legal authorities in electronic form

• That with the invention of LawPavilion Prime, legal research and law reporting has become much easier and our judgments more predictable by the introduction of "Legal Analytics" which the product, Law Pavilion Prime is all about. Hence, it cannot be said to be overstretched that LawPavilion Prime is geared towards assisting the Bench and the Bar to meet up with the evolution of legal practice in the digital world

• That the LawPavilion Prime is launched today and is available at the LawPavilion exhibition stand in the Civic Centre

BARBARA OMOSUN

She spoke from the young lawyers’ perspective on the future of young lawyers. She stated that young lawyers need to have the consciousness to thrive in the legal world in order to stay relevant. She advised young lawyers to engage in a lot of pro-bono services required to build up the necessary experience and skills and in addition to this she encouraged the need for mentorship and support for young lawyers.

In conclusion, she stated that the graduation of lawyers need to be strictly scrutinized in order to reduce the over-population of lawyers which has posed a threat to their employments and welfare. Lastly, she was of the view that young lawyers need to be respected and well remunerated because they have needs to cater to.

LAYI BABATUNDE SAN

He stressed on the fact that our well being is based on the well-being of the society and that as legal practitioners we cannot live in isolation. He furthermore added that;

• Friendship needs to be restored in all sectors of the legal profession
• There should be synergy between the elected officials of the NBA and the people who work with them.
• The NBA officials should be accountable

MR. ANDREW ODUM

His focus was on the regulatory bodies of the legal profession and urged the NBA to help fight corruption in this profession. He made it clear that the provisions of the Rules of Professional Conduct, which spells out the ethics of the profession, needs to be highly complied with. He expressed his dissatisfaction towards the Legal Practitioners Remuneration Committee (LPRC) whose activities in the country cannot be boasted about.

QUESTIONS AND CONTRIBUTIONS

• We need a department in our Association called the research and development department which should contain full time staff.
• Young lawyers need job security
• There should be a static vision of our bar and should not depend on the new president elected
• There should be a breakdown of our regulations into manual for compliance
• Pupillage is a means of slavery and should be scrapped
• What about law clinics in our Law schools

Mr Layi’s reaction was that young lawyers need to be patient for he was once a young lawyer before he became a SAN.

NBA President-Elect reacted to some of the contributions as he stated that there are very good law clinics in our schools but they need to be improved and well equipped. He also explained that the vision of a brand new bar is not set to upturn the vision of the NBA but it is the vision of his campaign which tends to drive his ideas to the mind’s eyes of all legal colleagues.