Institutions over individuality
“No man is an island” Popular adage Life is an individual race, every man is directly responsible for his/her actions and decisions, the result of which is reflected on the actor. In the legal profession, in as much as life is an individual race, a collective pool of individuals working together to achieve a common […]
“No man is an island” Popular adage
Life is an individual race, every man is directly responsible for his/her actions and decisions, the result of which is reflected on the actor. In the legal profession, in as much as life is an individual race, a collective pool of individuals working together to achieve a common goal yields more result than working alone.
Nigeria provides a peculiar situation of neglect and hardship on its citizen which places a legal professional on the same income level as a driver, secretary, messengers of federal institutions, this most often than not, drives young lawyers to establishing their own law firm. Most of this crop of lawyers don’t necessarily have a physical office space, working as cloud lawyers who perform their legal duties wirelessly, schedule appointments and meetings with clients in hotels, plaza’s, eateries and the likes, all in a bid to survive the economic hardship placed on Nigerian lawyers.
The legal environment of today boasts of more individual firms, than institutional firms, and the reason for this is not farfetched, Nigerian lawyers mostly feel cheated when working with a fellow colleague, there is the feeling of inadequate reward for job done, leading to distrust and lack of confidence- two important and necessary tool for any successful partnership.
To my mind, and I stand to be corrected, the major cause of ill health on legal professionals at old age is as a result of work-related stress accumulated over time. There exist law firms in Nigeria over ten (10) years old, without a lawyer under their employment for more than three (3) years. Every lawyer comes, work for a number of years, earn monthly salary, and when the right time comes, leaves to establish his/her own.
The principal partner is primarily responsible for the day to day organization, and upkeep of the law firm till old age, neglecting the health hazards of the complexities and cumbersome nature of the job. The law firms that litter the streets of our legal environment do not have structures in place to encourage partnerships. Every lawyer’s dream and aspiration in the profession is to leave salaried employment to run his/her own race thereby establishing their own law firms, forgetting that a legal professional can earn more income working together as an institution than as individuals.
The current structure in the Nigerian legal industry is a result of a pattern that our senior colleagues chose to follow. It then behooves on the younger generation to avoid making the same mistakes of our elders, and forge a new path for the future generation of lawyers.
There is no universally accepted form of partnership that all law firms ought to conform to, terms of partnership can differ from case to case to avoid a situation where one partner feels overly burdened than the others. The idea is to understand the form of partnership suitable to your particular situation, and partner with another lawyer whose legal practice fits into that genre of partnership.
Intending partners ought to be on the same page in terms of the type of partnership they decide to run. Some lawyers are satisfied with an open/loose partnership i.e a situation where each partner is solely responsible for his own law practice under the name of the partnership but in different location {one could be in Abuja, the other in Lagos}, the only connecting dot in this form of partnership is the name but each partner is responsible for the affairs of his own firm. There is the close-ended partnership, where the business of the firm irrespective of location is the responsibility of every partner, meaning each partner has a deciding power in the affairs of the firm be it employment of associates, payment of salaries et al.
In sum, partnership is key to a successful legal career, a sure way of institutionalising a law firm to succeed a particular individual and also, a medium of encouraging professionalism in the legal world, I strongly believe that for a lasting partnership, founding partners must have reasonable experience on the job and not only knowledge in elementary law.