Capacity building in the legal profession

According to Wikipedia, capacity building is the process of developing and strengthening the skills, instincts, abilities, processes and resources that organisations and communities need to survive, adapt, and thrive in the fast changing world  The business dictionary further helped in defining capacity building to mean “planned development of (or increase in) knowledge, output rate, management, […]

According to Wikipedia, capacity building is the process of developing and strengthening the skills, instincts, abilities, processes and resources that organisations and communities need to survive, adapt, and thrive in the fast changing world 

The business dictionary further helped in defining capacity building to mean “planned development of (or increase in) knowledge, output rate, management, skills and other capabilities of an organisation through acquisition, incentives, technology, and or training all with the aim to sustain development”.

Simply put, capacity building in the legal profession is developing the lawyering skills of a legal practitioner with tools such as training and incentives, the overall result being positive contribution to the growth of the legal profession.

The educational framework for building the capacity of a young lawyer should not be limited to the knowledge acquired from the Nigerian Law School; rather there should be continuous legal education through seminars, summits, conferences and the likes to better the skills of a lawyer. In some law firms in Nigeria, the capacity building of junior lawyers is restricted to the experience they get on the job, the fear being why train someone that would eventually leave the firm? When in truth, any positive improvement to the practise of a legal practitioner is a positive improvement to the legal profession.

A senior lawyer once said that a man leaves a particular place to seek greener pastures but tends to stay longer in an environment where he/she is well treated, meaning, the fear of losing the lawyer a law firm trains can be curtailed by how well the law firm treats the lawyer employee, with the end result being the growth of the law firm.

The upside to capacity building for young lawyers need not be expensive to accomplish. The Nigerian Bar Association has different mediums that help in one way or another to improve the skill of a lawyer, from the Annual General Conferences, the Young Lawyers Annual Summit to the section on Business Law and the likes which confer CLE credit units on a legal practitioner.

A senior lawyer while discussing how law firms can build the capacity of juniors in their employ, said to me “Junior lawyers are not willing to learn that is why certain law firms don’t engage in capacity building”. Respectfully sir, I beg to disagree. A young lawyer in active practise, who loves the job or does it as a means of livelihood would not refuse an opportunity to increase his/her skills if given one. The only young lawyers, if any who would turn down such opportunity, are those who are in the profession just to while away time pending when something juicy comes up.

 Due to the economic challenges of a young lawyer, achieving individual capacity building comes second to basic needs in the scale of preference and so places a heavy financial burden on the young wig and not that the knowledge would not like to be acquired. In institutionalized law firms, there is emphasis on building the lawyering skills of juniors by encouraging training methods other than experience on the Job.

It is the reality of life and creation of God that all fingers are not equal and so, it would be unfair for this young wig to say the same should apply to all law firms because whether we like it or not, we have small law firms struggling to find their feet in the profession that have young lawyers under their employment.

Having said the above, law firms can encourage capacity building in their own little way by paying/subsidizing for young lawyers practicing fee, conference fees, and other similar dues that would ordinarily be an impediment to capacity building in the legal profession.

If law firms invest in the capacity building of junior lawyers, they stand to benefit greatly from the knowledge acquired by the lawyer, and if after the training and adequate welfare of the young lawyer, he decides to go, consider it a contribution to the growth of the legal industry. ‘No knowledge is wasted.’

God speed!

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