A Better service delivery
Last week we discussed ‘the vulnerability of a lone wolf’, after reading the article a learned friend sent an email on how it was an interesting read, but could not comprehend why I used financial benefit as the motivating factor for lawyers establishing law firms as partnership in Nigeria. Apart from other benefits attached to partnerships which shall be discussed extensively on this piece, the principal aim of any business is profit making, and for a lawyer to succeed, he/she must first take legal practice as a business, before any other ancillary salient reasons for joining the profession.
The concept of partnership and its benefits has been discussed in one of our piece on partnership when the column was young lawyers’ column on 24th September, 2014. But for emphasis sake we shall re-echo the essence of partnership as the new genre of legal practice in Nigeria. It is trite knowledge that the only constant thing in life is change, and for the Nigerian Legal Community to favorably compete with advanced counter parts in other countries of the world, we ought to switch lanes from the norm of one man practice, to working collectively as a team, institutionalizing law firms beyond a particular legal professional.
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. ‘God forbid for any lawyer to know all the laws’, it is for this purpose that I strongly believe that when different lawyers with diverse reasonable experience on the job and knowledge in a particular specialization come together to work as a partnership, then a better service delivery is guaranteed for any kind of client.
When working as a complex group, a lawyer good with litigation can get a corporate brief, and not worry about service delivery in an area he/she is not well vast, the same applies to a lawyer in the partnership who is an expert on corporate briefs, or intellectual property can secure a litigation brief and the firm would efficiently handle such briefs, complementing each other for a better service delivery.
Another important attribute of partnership is structure, if a lawyer pays close attention to the modus operandi of most law firms all over the country, one would notice that not all firms operate with a structured system. In some law firms, if the principal partner is broke, then the firm is broke, if the principal partner has funds, then the firm is in plenty, whether we like to agree or not, this kind of legal practice does not lay a good foundation for the lawyers yet uncalled to the Nigerian Bar.
For the avoidance of any misconception, it is important to state at this point that a ‘one man law firm’ has its own benefits, and has survived the Nigerian legal profession all these years, but the time has come to put a new face to legal practice, the mantle of taking the profession to the next level is upon the new generation lawyers, not because it is easy but for the good of the future of the Nigerian legal profession.
The foundation of any partnership rests on the pillars of trust, honesty, and loyalty, if any pillar is missing, then the partnership is sure to collapse, to my mind, it is for this reason that many opt for the ‘one man law firm’ than partnership, what good is there in sleeping with the enemy?
The silver lining is partnership comes with a structured system in place to checkmate the lapses of partners, associates, paralegals, accountants, secretary, receptionist, and the likes. The managing partner {popularly called head of chambers in the ‘one man law firm’} is in charge of overseeing the daily affairs of the law firm on a tenure basis, creating a uniform channel of operation, assigning cases to counsels better skilled on a particular brief, arranging and scheduling the firms diary, calendar, meetings and appointments, the whole idea is to create a seamless healthy competitive atmosphere for all employed in a partnership, even a pension scheme can be arranged for employees to access once employment is terminated.
The essence of discovering new frontiers is not solely for the sake of discovery alone, but the survival of human kind, the same applies in the legal community, the new generation lawyers ought to practice law as evolved by the invent of technology, and development of the human mind. Godspeed! Do send your comment{s}, observation{s} and recommendation{s} to danielbulusson@gmail. com, follow on twitter @ bulussdan, or like our page on www.facebook.com/ younglawyerscolumn