Trials of young lawyers
The legal education is such a six-year investment embedded with monetary and material resources, six years of LLB and BL, six years of physical and mental labour. Nowadays, Nigeria is flooded with over 4000 lawyers being called to the Bar yearly. In fact, the legal profession has gone beyond the survival of the fittest alone but also the struggle of competence and connections.
The challenges of young lawyers are akin to the plight of suffering and smiling Nigerian masses. Better still, who says young lawyers are not suffering and smiling Nigerians ? Save the privileged ones, you need not ask any young wig where he works or how much he earns , just ask him to kindly donate to religious or social charity. His conduct and words afterwards will most likely satisfy your curiosity. Many law firms pay young lawyers as extremely low as National Minimum Wage.
Upon being called to Bar, a lawyer is enrolled as Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. This inferably means a lawyer can appear before any court in Nigeria, without the exclusion of the Supreme Court. Despite this professional capacity, a layman might still be wondering why new wigs still keep searching for jobs instead of jobs searching for their services. How many people are ready to give lucrative briefs( or cases) to young lawyers? Even some Principals of big chambers in the city cannot entrust a bail application to a new wig, let a lone trials of summary offences. Then, when shall the young grow when the big wigs are not giving space for growth? Young lawyers barely have cases to handle but always at the mercy of the Principals in terms of cases and cash.
Objectively, despite the stress and agony of legal education, it is quite unfortunate that the Nigerian Legal Education System does not breed new wigs who can meet the professional expectations of modern legal practice. Thus, many young lawyers are employed on basis of onthe-job training(otherwise known as pupilage). The five-year law degree is designed to feed aspirants of the Bar theoretically and the Nigerian Law School is expected to train these prospective Supreme Court advocates with practical aspect of the profession within just one year.
To hit the nail on the head, there is need to reform the legal education system to further and better expose aspirants of the Bar to legal practice, not theory alone, and thus meet professional expectations. In addition, the Nigerian Bar Association should regulate the working conditions and earnings of young lawyers to meet social expectations.
Akinola Yusuff is a law graduate and a human rights activist and can be reached at: akinolayusuff34@ gmail.com