No one knows how many lawyers there are in Nigeria. We don’t keep good records even of our lawyers. Such inexcusable omissions undermine the credibility of our Bar. There are well over 80,000 lawyers on the Roll of lawyers kept by the Supreme Court.
This is the list of all lawyers who have ever been admitted to practise in the country. A few thousands are surely dead. Many have also gone on to the Bench as Magistrates and judges. Obviously, neither the dead nor judges and magistrates should be voting in NBA’s elections. As presently organised, however, little stops votes being counted in their names.

The NBA elects its leadership by a system of delegates drawn from the 100 branches of the Bar. Each branch is entitled to 10 delegates each. If a branch has 100 members of more, it gets an additional delegate for every one hundred members. Also entitled to vote as delegates the elected officers of the NBA (13 of them), all living lawyers (excluding judges) who are members of the Body of Benchers, Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) and all members of the expanded National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Association. In all, this electorate at its optimal is less than 2,000.

There is a painful history to this delegates system. 1991 was the last time the NBA tried to vote by universal suffrage in Port Harcourt. The military government of Ibrahim Babangida was then in power. There were allegations that it was interested in installing a Bar leadership of its liking. There were court orders, police interference and, in the ensuing confusion, the Port Harcourt conference ended in chaos. The NBA was to become largely leaderless until the end of military rule in 1998.

The inevitable diagnosis that followed concluded that the problem was that the Bar could not manage the numbers seeking to vote. Yet there were then fewer than 20,000 people on the Roll of lawyers in Nigeria. The idea of suffrage for delegates alone was intended to reduce the expenses and uncertainties involved with universal suffrage at the Bar.

That diagnosis, with the benefit of hindsight, was quite wrong. The problem was not the numbers but the fact that the governance of our Bar was too dependent on government and the elections into leadership at the Bar were too prone to manipulation. These two problems remain unaddressed.

The NBA’s bi-ennial election conference is a four-day jamboree. On the first day, delegates travel to and arrive at the venue in Abuja. On the second day, the delegates are accredited and addressed by the candidates in a “Manifesto” night. Voting takes place on day three, followed by counting and declaration of results. On the fourth day, most travelling delegates return home.

There is no excuse for this arrangement. For most lawyers in single or two-person practice, the delegates’ conference is a waste. The risks of road travel are also enormous. Most delegates travel long distances by mini-bus from their respective branches. Many of these buses are inadequately insured, if at all. Elections at the Bar are one car crash away from being hostage to avoidable tragedy. No amount of “God forbid” or “It is not your portion!” should be allowed to diminish the size of this risk.

There is no reason why the Bar should spend four days in organizing elections in which there are fewer than 2,000 voters. If it continues this way, the Bar loses any standing to criticize the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) for its well-advertised inefficiencies.

Returning credibility to our Bar requires that this situation be reformed urgently. To do so, the NBA must set a target for leadership selection based on universal suffrage by 2016. It could be sooner. Achieving this requires three easy steps.

First, we need fully transparent and reliable records of lawyers in Nigeria. This requires a capable electronic platform. If the NBA can spend ten-digit sums acquiring buildings, it surely can find sums in the low seven-digits to finance a capable electronic platform with adequate firewalls. Old membership records can be mirrored electronically in one year or less. Prospectively, membership and admission records for all lawyers can be electronically maintained and updated.

Second, membership management – including services, entitlements and voting – can be organised around a unique professional identity number (PIN) assigned to each lawyer on Roll. At the end of the deadline for payment of annual Practising Fees the first quarter of each year, the NBA should issue the list of all members who have paid the fees and who, thereby, will have the rights to membership services and voting.

Third, the idea of gathering all voters in one place is Mediaeval and must end. In the current security context that we have in Nigeria, it is plainly unsafe. Instead, voting processes at the Bar, including accreditation and balloting, can and should be de-centralised. Current ICT capabilities make this easily manageable.

The newly elected President of the NBA, Okey Wali, a Senior Advocate, can easily launch the Association onto a new pedestal by implementing these easily achievable reforms. To help get the message out, he can launch a Movement for Universal Bar Suffrage (MUBS) in 2012, creating the awareness across 100 branches of the NBA to make it possible to amend the constitution of the NBA in 2013 to eliminate the delegate’s conference. The larger goal in doing this will be to give us a Bar for the 21st Century.

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28. Strictly speaking, the pupillage that I envisage is not just apprenticeship but also discipleship. That is why I have recommended that the law firms that will be qualified to engage pupil-counsel must be selected by the Nigerian Bar Association. It cannot be open to all. Similarly, the process of pupillage cannot also be open to all
lawyers called to Bar. There are many lawyers today who although called to Bar, do not intend to practise law. It is the aptitude test that will weed away such lawyers and help them concentrate on what they really want to do notwithstanding their law degree.

29. I am not a Darwinian but I believe that the time has come if we are to enhance the capacity of the young lawyer in Nigeria not just to do it by pupillage as I have defined it but also to insist on the survival of the fittest. This is what a very wise Nigerian lawyer had to say about the qualification for becoming a Judge of the High Court in Nigeria:

“If we had our way, we would insist that no one without a good knowledge of Mathematics, or Logic and Methodology, and Psychology, in addition to his professional qualifications, should be elevated to the Bench. The rigorous mental drill which these disciplines enforce; the tidiness of mind and precision in thought and presentation which the study of Mathematics, Logic and Methodology inculcates; the dependable tools for the investigation, analysis and interpretation of facts which Logic and Methodology provide; and the breadth of outlook and a deep comprehension of ‘the complex of human passion’ which psychology imparts – all these, among other things are sine qua non of any healthy trial or adjudication of disputes.”

30. There is no doubt that we all as lawyers believe and admit that if our Judges must have these qualities, so also must our lawyers possess them. Every lawyer requires the tidiness of mind, precision in thought and presentation and a deep comprehension of the complex of human passion. These are not the requirements that a dropout can possess but it is the tragic reality of today’s legal profession that the study of Law is gradually becoming the escape route for the Mathematics and Science dropouts.

31. I make bold to say that the legal profession cannot be the safe haven for those rejected in other professions as it is increasingly becoming now. Candidates who find Mathematics difficult to understand or detest the Sciences simply think that the study of Law is the next best alternative. Our wise leaders think otherwise. A few examples will suffice. The revered Justice Andrews Obaseki, a retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and an eminent jurist first successfully completed a degree course in Agriculture before becoming a lawyer. Another eminent jurist, C. A. Oputa also a retired Justice of the Supreme Court, also successfully completed a first degree in Biology before reading Law. Aguda and F.R.A. Williams, established names in the legal profession, excelled in the Sciences but opted to read Law.

32. I do not intend to raise another debate as to whether it is necessary to make a first degree compulsory for admission into the Law Faculty. However, I believe the time has come for us to insist on an aptitude test for all those who intend to enter into pupillage and to open appointments as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, a Judge of the High Court or a Bencher to only those who have undergone such pupillage and have shown aptitude as recommended by that wise lawyer. If we are to enhance capacity building, there must first exist the capability for capacity building.

33. It appears we are unable to control entry requirements for admission into the law faculties in Nigeria which has now been reduced to a ridiculously low level. Law is now offered in more than twenty universities in Nigeria including a university specialising in Science and Technology. If we have no control over the entry requirement into the law faculty, we can have control over the entry requirement into the profession proper.

34. That is why pupillage offers the best if not the only opportunity for this to be done. Continuing legal education, mentoring, licensing and other methods of enhancing capacity building being presently developed by the NBA are ineffective without pupillage. It is necessary to first set in order the beginning of the young lawyer’s career before determining how the career can be shaped. When one embarks on a journey and he faces the wrong direction, he will never arrive at his destination no matter how efficient the conduct of the journey may be.

The Structure of Pupillage
35. It is necessary for me to outline the essential ingredients of the pupillage that I envisage for enhancing capacity building in the young lawyer. The first and most important is that such young lawyer must be focused on making a career in Law. Whatever might have been the reason for studying Law, he must now become single-minded and determined to pursue a career of Law and no more. Every literature read, hobby pursued, thought generated and association made must have as its main focus the goal of making that young lawyer an excellent one.

36. One of the problems that the young lawyer faces in Nigeria is the huge demand from those who expect a quick return immediately after graduation. They may be either parents or dependants who believe that the huge investment on the education of the young lawyer must yield instant reward. This is aside from the personal needs of the young lawyer particularly for basic amenities like a good accommodation, a car and a reasonable disposable amount in the bank account to guarantee comfortable standard of living.

37. That is why I have recommended that the apprenticeship in pupillage must be a PAID one. How do we determine a reasonable pay? The standard “entry salary” in many developed jurisdictions today is about $2000. In Nigeria, I recommend a starting salary of about N100,000 per month for a young lawyer based in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Warri and Abuja which are presently the four most expensive cities. In all other jurisdictions, it should not be less than N60,000. I have not come to these figures arbitrarily.

38. I believe that a young lawyer just graduating from the Law School now falls in the bracket of 22 – 25 years. A salary of N100,000 gives a total of N1.2 million out of which a decent flat of N400,000 per annum and living expenses of another N400,000 leaves him with N400,000 to invest in personal assets like furnishings and car.

39. I strongly support that we take care of our parents and dependants but as the saying goes in the airplane, if there is a sudden loss of pressure in the cabin, you must first wear your own oxygen mask before helping others. I am of the opinion that a very bright junior can double this pay in the first two or three years. However, if the young lawyer’s expenses are more than these, he can only have himself to blame.

40. The next requirement is the desire for continuing education both in law and also in other areas particularly the Arts and Humanities. This comes out of self-motivation and initiative. A young lawyer who lacks initiative and self-motivation has already made pupillage very difficult. These are innate qualities that have to be possessed by those who want to make the Law a career. When a young lawyer is armed with these qualities, he will be result-oriented and will have the ability to continue to develop himself until he becomes an excellent lawyer. That is why no lawyer in pupillage must see himself as an employee.

41. The desire of the employee is only for the bottom line and not for self-development. Many young lawyers have had what would have been an otherwise excellent career truncated by constant job changes in the search for increase in wages. In an apprenticeship, the aim is not wages but competence with the assurance that as competence increases, the capacity for increase in wages is enhanced. One of the things that I look for in employing young lawyers is career stability. It is very likely that a lawyer who has changed jobs four times in three years would eventually have a stultified legal career.

42. The next requirement for a successful pupillage is rainmaking. The young lawyer must immediately understand that it is the clients’ fees that sustains and improves a law firm. Every lawyer thrives on the ability to deliver qualitative service and charge appropriately for it. The young lawyer must understand that the best form of marketing is referrals from satisfied clients. Therefore, every single brief must be handled as the source of another brief.

43. The young lawyer must demonstrate professional competence doing all that is necessary to protect his client’s interest without compromising on professional integrity. The way to achieve this is to put one’s self in the position of the client without necessarily becoming the client. The requirement of an independent and dispassionate view must be kept at all times. There must be no undercharging or overcharging the client.

44. All these techniques are learnt from choosing the right pupil master. The young lawyer must have his own focus of how he intends to build his practice. He would now carefully search for a principal that has these qualities that he wants to emulate. That is why it is necessary to be a member of a local Bar where one can get details of such firms and then determine where to go.

45. The last requirement is cultivating the legal language. Language is an essential tool for reasoning. Poor language begets poor reasoning. It is important that the young lawyer cultivates appropriate legal language as this is the only way that his professional competence will be outwardly measured. When the young lawyer begins to master legal language, he develops an ability to communicate with the client and simplify complex procedures. Competence is best determined by an ability to simplify what would have otherwise been a puzzle.

46. It must be the aim of every young lawyer to continue developing his understanding of English Language which still remains the language of legal practice in Nigeria. Aside from this, the young lawyer must develop skills in critical thinking in order to sharpen his mind and become more analytical in his reasoning. As language enhances reasoning, so also does reasoning help language. Both are interdependent.

Conclusion
47. To sum up, I believe that the time has come for us to separate the wheat from the chaff in the legal profession. This is by looking for ways and means of confining legal practice to those who have the drive and zeal for it. Those who lack such zeal will still be legal practitioners but not lawyers in practice. I recommend pupillage as I have tried to define and explain it in this paper as the best way to achieve it.

48. There are many points of controversy in the legal profession today. Are we over-producing lawyers? And is the declining quality the result of such over-production? Should we fix the maximum number of lawyers that can be called to Bar in any year as South Korea has done? Should the possession of a first degree be an entry requirement into the law faculty? Should the establishment of an independent legal practice immediately upon being called to Bar be prohibited? Should the entry requirements for admission into the law faculty, even if it will not be a first degree be improved upon by insisting on credits in Mathematics and a Science subject? These and more are the current debates going on.

49. I do not think we should tie ourselves down to all these. A properly structured and well-organised pupillage is likely to solve all these problems. It will sift away those who should not have gone to the law school. It will help give focus to those who are left. The only urgent question is how we can secure the future of the legal profession with those who have already qualified. When those who have already qualified are properly sifted, those who are aspiring to be lawyers will take the hint.

50. I have deliberately avoided the thorny issue of the declining quality of our young lawyer upon graduating from the university which some believe is attributable to examination malpractices in our secondary schools and universities. It is the popular view that as a result of the erosion of academic strata between the lecturer and the student which has led to undue familiarity, the gradings in these educational institutions are now suspect. This controversy need not be examined too seriously having regard to the solution that I am proffering. Since it is beyond debate that the entry requirements into our law faculties have become abysmally unacceptable, it is to be expected that unscrupulous students and lecturers may compound the bad situation by colluding to fabricate false grades and results. The NBA has very little control over JAMB and the university. However, we can determine what happens after the law school. Pupillage is a veritable tool in exposing examination cheats and fraudulent results. It is the weapon that we should constantly sharpen in our determined desire to sift the lilies from the thorns. That is why I recommend pupillage as the plank of enhancing capacity building in the young lawyer. If well developed and coordinated, it will signal the return to the acceptable standards set by the founding fathers of the Nigerian legal profession. We must ensure that the labours of our heroes past must not be in vain.

Thank you.

16. The type of pupillage that I am recommending is a period of paid apprenticeship during which the pupil counsel learns what was not and cannot be taught at the law faculty
and the law school. Before entering into such apprenticeship, the pupil counsel is made to sit for a qualifying aptitude test in a law firm designated by the Nigerian Bar Association as appropriate for pupillage. After being successful, the pupil counsel then enters into an apprenticeship agreement for a period voluntarily stated by such pupil but of a period not less than thirty-six months.

17. During this period of thirty six months, the pupil counsel undergoes practical training in the history of the legal profession in Nigeria, sourcing and billing clients, courtroom strategies, alternative dispute resolution, understanding the Judge and the client, legal drafting, legal language, ethics and etiquettes and information technology.

18. It is obvious that within the period of four, five or even 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.

19. 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 in 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.

Is Pupillage Necessary?
20. There is no doubt that this will be a contentious debate. However, as I have said, the type of pupillage that I envisage and now advocate is not yet entrenched in Nigeria. If we look at pupillage, in the way that is very common in this country, in which a newly qualified lawyer wanting to “gain experience” moves into a law firm or joins a “sole proprietorship practice” without counsel or guidance hoping to spend some few years and then setting up his independent practice, then it is very doubtful whether such “pupillage” is necessary.

21. There are very many successful senior lawyers in Nigeria today who underwent practically no pupillage, as we presently know it in Nigeria. My principal’s pupillage was for only three months! Furthermore, we can also point to several lawyers who served “pupillage” for a very long period, some for upward of ten years but are now buried in obscurity. I myself do not advocate that type of pupillage. Even if that type had been useful in the past, or the avoidance of it has not made a difference, the days of unplanned beginning in the legal profession are long gone.

22. Nigerian lawyers today are like the sand at the sea shore or the stars in the sky. It is time to structure the early years and give hope of a brighter future by an excellent beginning. In 2003, there were about 41,000 lawyers in Nigeria, dead and alive. As at now, July 2012, there are more than 80,000. What that means is that growing at an average of 8,000 lawyers annually, the present number will nearly double in another ten years. If we ignore pupillage of the type I now advocate which would be indigenous to Nigeria, we leave our young lawyers in free ranging practice and as sheep without a shepherd.

23. The repercussion of this will be that many will go into independent legal practice without counsel or leadership and create a mushroom of stunted firms which are incapable of sustaining themselves or expanding to admit other young lawyers. It will be interesting to take the statistics of law firms set up five years ago by lawyers immediately upon being called and the number of those that are surviving today. I do not think that we will be delighted by our discovery.

24. It is my firm and solemn submission that a law firm set up by a young lawyer immediately after call is doomed to either fail or become a plague on the client world. Clients’ cases and consequently their lives will become a guinea-pig in the hands of untrained minds. Learning will be haphazard, and billing, arbitrary. Many of such firms will be on subsistence level for a very long period, unable to recruit juniors or even pay them well, if recruited.

25. They become pawns in the hands of unscrupulous clients and victims of serial breaches of professional ethics. What is the palm tree to a tomato plant? A desperate effort to burst out into legal practice without pupillage is like the airline trainee pilot upon graduation, seizing a 747 jumbo jet for a trans-Atlantic flight with 300 souls on board. Is it possible to imagine an NYSC medical doctor conducting a caesarean operation? Or a civil engineer upon graduation designing structural drawings for a ten-storey block of flats?

26. The pupillage is the incubation that the young lawyer needs to enhance capacity. The queries raised however cannot be wished away. It is still necessary to inquire into why lawyers who did not undergo pupillage succeed and even those who did faded away into oblivion.