Trials of young lawyers

The legal education is such a six-year investment embedded with monetary and material resources, six years of LLB and BL, six years of physical and mental labour. Nowadays, Nigeria is flooded with over 4000 lawyers being called to the Bar yearly. In fact, the legal profession has gone beyond the survival of the fittest alone […]

The legal education is such a six-year investment embedded with monetary and material resources, six years of LLB and BL, six years of physical and mental labour. Nowadays, Nigeria is flooded with over 4000 lawyers being called to the Bar yearly. In fact, the legal profession has gone beyond the survival of the fittest alone but also the struggle of competence and connections.

The challenges of young lawyers are akin  to the plight of suffering and smiling Nigerian masses. Better still, who says young lawyers are not suffering and smiling Nigerians ? Save the privileged ones, you need not ask any young wig where he works or how much he earns , just ask him to kindly donate to religious or social charity. His conduct and words afterwards will most likely satisfy your curiosity.  Many law firms pay young lawyers  as extremely low as National Minimum Wage.

Upon  being called to Bar, a lawyer is enrolled as Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. This inferably means a lawyer  can appear before any court in Nigeria, without the exclusion of the Supreme Court. Despite this professional  capacity,  a layman might still be wondering  why new wigs still keep searching for jobs instead of jobs searching for their services.  How many people are ready  to give lucrative  briefs( or cases)   to young lawyers?  Even some Principals of big chambers in the city  cannot  entrust a bail application to a new wig, let a lone trials of summary offences. Then, when shall the young grow when the big wigs are not giving space for growth? Young lawyers barely have cases to handle but always at the mercy  of the Principals in terms of cases and cash.

Objectively, despite  the stress and agony of legal education, it is quite unfortunate that the Nigerian  Legal Education System does not breed new wigs  who can meet the professional expectations of modern legal practice. Thus,  many young lawyers are employed on basis of on-the-job training(otherwise known as pupilage). The five-year law degree is designed to feed aspirants of the Bar theoretically and the Nigerian Law School is expected to train these prospective Supreme Court advocates with practical aspect of the profession within just one year.

To hit the nail on the head,  there is need to reform the legal  education system to further and better  expose aspirants of the Bar to legal practice, not theory alone,  and thus meet professional expectations. In addition,  the Nigerian Bar Association should regulate the working conditions and earnings of young lawyers to meet social expectations.

Akinola Yusuff is a law graduate and a human rights activist  and can be reached at: [email protected]