As the Nigeria Law School (NLS) prepares to call to bar fresh law graduates, experts have shared their views on the way forward on enhancing the quality of law education in the country.
The NLS in October announced that 4, 285 students passed the examination for call to bar in December. The school said 1,272 students out of 5,891 failed the examination conducted in August.
Complaints over the poor quality of presentation by some lawyers in courts have caused a number of reforms by the Council of Legal Education (CLE).
A law teacher, Dr Sylvester Imanhobe, said one of the reforms is that young lawyers must have mandatory two years tutelage attachment to law firms to enhance the quality of their education.
“Apart from that, the National Universities Commission (NUC) should be more assertive on standard because I visited some faculties of law, and they were nothing to write home about,” he said.
He blamed the poor standard of legal education to the overall decay in the nation’s education sector and called for more investment in the sector.
“That of law is not peculiar. The challenge you have in law, you have it in History, English, Physics, Chemistry, even Medicine, you know cases of medical negligence-these are all examples of the falling standard of education in Nigeria. It is a foundational thing. In Nigeria, we need to invest more in education, research, etc. Agreements with ASUU etc respect them; all these incessant closures of universities affect everybody.
“We have to work on the unemployment rate, it affects them to the extent that commitment to education is not really there. Many students just go to school now just for the certificate without the skills.
“Go to an average public school now, you will be amazed that students don’t even have accommodation and for those that have accommodation, go and look at where they sleep. Government needs to take education as a corporate social responsibility, not just talk of money,” he added.
For his part, Hamid Ajibola Jimoh said NUC has a role to play in ensuring that only qualified universities get accredited to offer undergraduate and postgraduate law programme.
He also listed other suggestions such as merit-based employment of law lecturers, theory and practical in law education at both universities and law school, updated law library and computerised centres, introduction of law clinics at various faculties and law school, and improvement in the moot court trials at both the universities and the law school.
Addressing the problem of falling standard of law education at the AELEX 12th Annual Lecture, which took place recently at MUSON Centre in Lagos, with the theme ‘Schooling Without Learning’, stakeholders made spirited deliberation on the challenges of legal education at the event.
According to participants, “if the foundations of primary or secondary school education is weak, legal education at the higher school levels would not only be weak but would have a faulty learning foundation which would affect them throughout their career. In building the next generation of lawyers, the educational system must be strengthened in order to build a new breed of brilliant lawyers.”
The chairman of the occasion, Chief Mrs. Solanke Folanke (SAN), the first female silk in the country, condemned the unethical conduct of some lawyers in and outside the court.
Today, the number of complaints filed against lawyers before the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC) is increasing at an alarming rate. Also seen today is the poor dressing and shabby appearance before our courts.
“Because of the high incidence of misconduct and the use of unprofessional language among lawyers, I advise that there is need for a compulsory two-year apprenticeship/pupillage programme to groom new wigs,” she said.
According to her, continuous legal education is a sine qua non for professional excellence,” because in legal education we address ourselves as learned which means “knowing the law.”
She emphasized that the years spent in university and at law school where all theory and no new wig should jump into practice without first cutting their teeth.
Investigations show that within the period of four to six years spent in our training institutions, not every aspect of law and practice can be covered or even mastered. Many lawyers can easily recall that they never learnt in the university the branch of law in which they are now specialists. Up till today, there are few, if any, Faculties of Law in Nigeria that offer Chieftaincy Law, Anti-Corruption Law, Project Financing or documentary credits, Agricultural Law and Advertising Law. These are branches of Law that constitute an enormous part of the practice areas in many jurisdictions in Nigeria.
It is during pupillage that a pupil-counsel understands billing, client interviews, counsel-court relationship, courtroom strategies, rainmaking and many other important aspects of law which only practice can make perfect. This is the period that I refer to as “pupillage”. It is the period when a legal career is shaped by the eminence of the pupil-master, the contacts built, the practical experience acquired, the culture and etiquette imbibed.
Solanke advised that lawyers should endeavour to continue to read while sharpening their advocacy skills, adding “Reading nurtures the soul and expands the reader’s horizon.”
She regretted what she termed a calamity of wasted years in formal education by many without learning and linked such waste to the quality of lawyers we have today.
“Every good lawyer will admit that the reading culture must be cultivated for life by lawyers both young and old,” adding that it should be a lifelong addiction.” Put in another way, according to Mark Twain, “the man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
The speaker of the day, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos and current Pro Chancellor of The Technical University Ibadan, Professor O. Ibidapo-Obe, Ph.D., in his paper noted that schooling is not sufficient for learning.
“The declining quality of education has affected leadership and expertise in different spheres of our national life.
“It has made many Nigerian families take their children to go and school abroad and they are mostly at the top of their classes,” he added.
He advised government to do more for the educational sector as our public-school system is endangered.”
Other discussants at the lectures were Mrs. Adora Emily Ojo, a consummate educationist, counsellor and reformer with over 30 years’ experience in teaching, and Ms. Swanta Bonat, who is currently the Head Teacher/Principal of KYCA Academy, Sagwaza Gora, in one of the rural communities of Zangon Kataf Local Government Area of Kaduna State.
