THE ADVOCATE

“An aspiration is a long-term hope or ambition of achieving something in life, such as becoming a lawyer or medical doctor. In contrast, a goal can be a shorter-term individual step toward achieving a specific aspiration, such as passing the law school entrance exam or getting admitted to medical school.” -www.google.com/search/ aspiration

It is trite knowledge that the term of a lawyer is for life, meaning there is no end to being a legal practitioner except death or debarment. It is my candid observation that many lawyers have great aspirations necessary to improve the legal profession but allow self-imposed restrictions to deprive them from achieving same.

There is reason the title of this piece is the ‘Power of aspiration’ not ‘Power of dreams’, and the sole reason is because many don’t believe in dreams. Aspiration on the other hand, “is a hope or ambition of achieving something” and applicable to all great minds.

Aspire for greatness in the legal profession, the plethora cases of innovation and success stories in the legal profession of lawyers who started from nothing to greatness, the wealth accruing initiatives popping up in the profession, like electronic reporting and all, should be enough motivation to any lawyer to go beyond the limit his or her mind has placed on them.

Some brilliant ideas lose life at conception because of the overwhelming effects of the discouraging elements that play out in the society. Time and experience have shown that lack of support and encouragement for any idea has a way of determining the longevity or otherwise of such idea. This is not peculiar to the legal profession alone, it is a recurrent experience in the Nigerian setting, and this writer has suffered his own share of such setbacks for new ideas.

Nigerians most often doubt the genuineness of new ideas on first hearing. The bad image of deception that walks around with the name of the country contributes more to crippling beautiful innovations of this great country. The truth is, even a good idea needs funds to scale through, and if those who ought to sponsor the said idea, view it as opportunism, and hold back their resources, such idea with time would fade away to history.

It is understandable that many aspire to do great things both in the legal profession and the society, but sometimes don’t see the need to put in the effort to actualize such aspirations. But then, no innovation got to where it is without obstacles. Facebook is a social networking service launched on February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard student Eduardo Saverin, today it has 1.71 billion monthly active users and a total asset of $49,407 billion as at 2015. Many are not aware of the obstacles Mark had to go through to make Facebook possible because the perseverance and never give up attitude eventually paid off.

The same applies to all of us; both learned and lettered. We might not hit a milestone like Mark Zuckerberg, but we can get somewhere if we believe in our aspirations and work towards same. Legal practitioners should try to see the legal environment for the potentials it avails sometimes people don’t know they need a particular thing until someone shows them they do.

So true, the legal environment might be discouraging, frustrating to that innovation or idea that could change the legal profession, the ability to plan, stay focused and resilient to achieving same might eventually pay off. To my mind, it is self-imposed limitation that every inventor surpassed to bring any invention to fruition.

We should grow from thinking the legal environment is too big a place to make an impact as an individual. We must see ourselves worthy of bringing the desired change to the profession; we must view ourselves as capable of taking the legal profession to the next level. Believe in your competence and capability to do great things, look beyond the immediate temporal challenges that may look insurmountable, but rather the future permanent benefit that comes with the success of your idea. There is power in aspiration. God speed!

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