Jurisdictional gap

Ever wonder why law firms in jurisdictions like Lagos State, have a constant touch with legal practice that borders on partnerships, mergers and acquisition, international trade disputes, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), and the likes, while law firms in jurisdictions like Kaduna State are one-man owned and litigation inclined, if properties and corporate affairs come along the way, fine, if it doesn’t then the court room it is. This difference in practice and rate of development between jurisdictions is known as ‘jurisdictional gap’.

One irony of ‘jurisdictional gap’ is the fact that law firms in jurisdictions like Kaduna, Zaria, and Kano etc are more litigation inclined in their legal practice, does not provide an automatic guarantee that legal practitioners in such jurisdictions would be experts or ahead in litigation than legal practitioners in jurisdictions like Lagos, Kwara, Abuja, etc. What determines the difference is access to the knowledge surrounding an area of law, and putting such knowledge into best practice.

I once heard of a law firm called Sterling Partnership, now African Primera Legal, a result of a merger. Some jurisdictions are still unaware of the concept of partnership, some are so familiar with the concept, they have taken a step further towards merging, ‘Jurisdictional gap’.

There are reputable law firms in jurisdictions like Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt operating as institutions with international legal practice standards, and there are law firms in other jurisdictions still doing successfully well under sole proprietorship. This does not mean that the legal practitioners in one jurisdiction are smarter or less ambitious than the others, but rather, the opportunity and access to trending knowledge of law.

If you ask me, and I stand to be corrected, ‘Your network is your net worth’. A law firm in Lagos is likely to be closer in dealings and relationships to law firms in advanced countries than they are to law firms in Lokoja, Minna, Taraba, and the likes (Not in distance, but in connection) yet in the same country.

In some jurisdictions, law firms can afford to pay a legal practitioner a start up monthly salary of N100,000 to N150,000, while in other jurisdictions, the law firms can only afford to pay a legal practitioner a start up monthly salary between N30,000 - N50, 000. Some law firms don’t even pay salary, the legal practitioner earns his/her income through effort and contribution to the law firm, ‘Jurisdictional gap’. It is true, that what is good for the goose might not be good for the gander, it is however preferable for the legal industry to tilt towards sporadic legal growth and improvement across jurisdictions than to have few jurisdictions faring better than others.

In the words of late President JF Kennedy before sending the first man to space, “We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won… not because they are easy but because they are hard.”

In order to effectively bridge ‘jurisdictional gap’ in the Nigerian legal industry, a legal professional in jurisdictions like Nasarawa, Suleja or Jalingo must be ready to discover and try out new boundaries in novel areas of law like the legal professionals in advanced jurisdictions.

Discovery is never for the sake of just discovery; in this case, it is for the survival and development of the legal profession. Told some members of the Young Progressive Lawyers (YPL) at its last monthly meeting, that because a particular practice of law has always been the norm, doesn’t necessarily make it the best practice, so also, the fact that a lawyer stays in the law office from 8am-5pm doesn’t mean such legal professional was productive all day.

The world today is a fast paced society. With the advent of technology almost everything surrounding the human race is changing at the speed of light. What then happens when the safest guardian of liberty yet devised (Law) changes at a snail like speed?

Legal professionals can break new grounds and boundaries in law by acquiring knowledge from one another; the power of a click of a button is easily available to every lawyer spread across the country. Why then, can’t we all have access to the knowledge that put one jurisdiction in a better place than the other? This way many jurisdictions can grow at an evenly sporadic rate.

Godspeed!

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