Put in the work and perfect the trade
Legal Practitioner Nambili Mhata said fellow young Namibians who aspire to be lawyers should put in hours of hard work and preparation to perfect their trade and set themselves apart.
Mhata is the founder of Nambili Mhata Legal Practitioners (NMLP), a firm that specialises in commercial litigation, criminal law, corporate governance, administrative law, mining law, police brutality, defamation, motor vehicle accidents, insurance law, wrongful death, medical malpractice, immigration and administration of estates.
The 30-year-old told Youth Corner that in law, there are misconceptions but it should be noted that justice and fairness always prevail.
“Although sometimes misused by the powerful, law is all about fairness and justice; hence, it is important that a lawyer cultivates an innate sense of fairness and justice. Trust it when doing research and general preparation for cases,“he shared.
The Oniipa-born said law was never a passion nor was it his plan to pursue in the beginning but that his father had a role to play.
“It is a mixture of reasons. My dad always told us as a family that he wanted to do law but could not do so because of financial constraints. He ended up getting funding to study public health – and that is what he did until he mastered that field and got a PhD,” he recalled.
Mhata said he wanted to study computer engineering but that was and still is a field that requires prospective students to do exceptionally well in Mathematics – a subject he was not good in, which propelled him to choose another route.
“I started researching on the law field; I immediately learnt that law was all about fairness, justice and helping people with their problems – and it did not require math. At that moment, I realised I was getting divine direction to law; that it is what I wanted to do – and I never looked back. Now, I am enjoying every moment of it,” said Mhata. The firm currently employs five young Namibians, including Mhata, consisting of a legal secretary (Moria Kambrunde), a candidate legal practitioner (Emmanuella Omoregie), an accountant/bookkeeper (Aina Kambundu) and Josef Kafita, a reliable messenger who delivers their documents.
Mhata touched on the importance of mentorship, something Namibians should invest their time in.
“I worked at Sisa Namandje & Co. Inc., where I started as a candidate legal practitioner in February 2015 and left six years later as a senior associate at end of February 2021 to establish NMLP, which started operating on 1 March 2021. It was under the great legal training and mentorship of Namandje that my passion for law was extra fuelled and developed my ability to practice law at the level I can do today.”
He added: “Private practice is so busy – and you have to give up a lot of your time to do a good job and to be successful. But reaping success from hours and hours of preparation and seeing clients happy as a result makes up for it, so I am not complaining.”