DEFINITION OF LEGAL EDUCATION
Legal education is the system of training students to
become legal specialists. Such training is given in educational institutions
that are devoted to the study of law. It can also be seen as a body of
knowledge about the government, administration, and law. Possession of a legal
education serves as a basis for professional legal activity. The elements of
legal education in each period of history have corresponded to the level of
development of legislation and jurisprudence.
LEGAL
EDUCATION IN NIGERIA
Legal education in Nigeria is patterned after the
system in England except that whereas lawyers in England are solicitors or
barristers, all lawyers in Nigeria qualify and can practice as both barristers
and solicitors.
Legal education in Nigeria consists of academic study
for 4 to 5 years (depending on the mode of entry) in a law faculty and a year
in the law school followed by call to the Nigerian Bar and enrollment as a
legal practitioner at the Supreme Court.
It is the National Universities Commission (NUC) that
established minimum academic standards for the conferment of law degrees
(LL.B).
Likewise, the Council of Legal Education has
established requirement which a law degree must satisfy before it can qualify
its holder for admission into the Nigerian Law School for a BL. This therefore
subjects law faculties to two accreditations: one by the NUC and another by the
Council of Legal Education (CLE).
In recent times, there has been growing concern about
the deterioration of Nigeria’s educational system stemming from the quality of
our university graduates, which has become less than satisfactory and the law
graduates are no exception. Hence the growing demand for reforms not only in
legal education but of the entire educational system in the country.
Since lawyers are required to have legal education
before they can be called to the Bar, what constitutes the purpose of legal
education?
According to NUC’s document on Minimum Academic
Standards for law in Nigerian universities: “Academic legal education should
therefore act, first, as a stimulus to stir the student into the critical
analysis and examination of the prevailing social, economic and political
systems of his community and, secondly, as an intellectual exercise aimed at
studying and assessing the operation, efficacy and relevance of various rules
of law in society.”
Undoubtedly, all human activities in their social,
economic, political and environmental contexts, take place within a legal
framework. It is therefore necessary, according to the NUC revised Minimum
Academic Standards for Law, “that the student of law should also have a broad
general knowledge and exposure to other disciplines in the process of acquiring
legal education.”
Lawyers, as judges, in private or corporate practice,
in the academics or in government, shape the society and the lives of their
fellow human beings.”
On paper, it looks as though the system that produces
lawyers in Nigeria is foolproof and devoid of cracks, but a closer inspection
has revealed that this is not the case.
On one hand, the Nigerian lawyer oversees major
financial and property transactions, often preparing the instrument of transfer
and his statutory declaration of compliance is a sine qua non for the
registration of a company. He also represents his clients in civil and criminal
matters in court where he serves as mouthpiece. . A law student goes through
the University and then on to the Law School. It is after he has passed the Bar
Examination and has been found worthy in character that he is called to the
Nigerian Bar.
THE IMPACTS
OF LEGAL EDUCATION IN NIGERIA
Education is supposed to provide students with the
general ability to think critically and independently and apply this line of
independent thinking to the practical aspects of what they have been taught.
The Nigerian legal education system has produced some
of the best brains in legal practice but there is still room for improvement and
the full utilization of the vast potential.
The quality of lawyers turned out every year has been
on the wane. We have lawyers who cannot draft processes, who cannot speak good
English and who argue illogically. A lawyer should stand out from the crowd,
even if he/she is not in active legal practice.
The blame here lies largely on our training
institutions, particularly our Law Faculties and the Nigerian Law School. The
Law Faculties of Universities owe a duty to adequately prepare Nigerian Law
Students for the largely procedural law that will be studied at the Nigerian
Law School and encountered in practice. That way, the transition from
substantive law to procedural law will not be too sudden. The law school, in
turn, owes a duty to ensure that those who are eventually called to Bar are
competent and can defend their Call to Bar Certificates at all times. Every
year (sometimes once, sometimes twice) over 3, 000 (Three Thousand) lawyers are
released into the society and many of them do not have a clue about what legal
practice entails. In most cases, they have to be trained all over again by
their prospective Chambers.
The Legal Profession has therefore suffered from the
problems experienced by the institutions of legal education, most especially:
· Lack of
synergy between the institutions (Law Faculties and Law School).
The bulk of what is taught in Nigerian Faculties of
law is substantive law which tells us what law ought to be (de lege ferenda)
instead of procedural law which deals with what law is (lex lata). When
students arrive at the Nigerian Law School, from Nigerian Universities, they
are immediately faced with the remarkable difference or distinction between
what is taught by both institutions of learning. This makes for an awkward
transition for the law students. In some cases, a good number of them never
quite grasp the complexity of what they are facing since it all seems so
surreal. the Council of Legal Education, in a bid to build a synergy between
the Nigerian Law School and Nigerian faculties of law, it has stipulated the
courses to be offered and taught in Nigerian Universities. A couple of Nigerian
faculties of law still offer some decidedly strange law courses which are not
approved by the Council of Legal Education and which do not positively
influence the making of a Nigerian Lawyer. A lot of Nigerian Universities have
no room in their curriculum for the practical aspect of law, which is what is
taught at the Nigerian Law School.
· Too many
students.
The problem of too many students is a lack of synergy
with the Nigerian Law School. Nigerian Faculties of law admit too many
students. It is quite understandable that faculties of law seek to make Legal
Education available to all and sundry but the downside of this desire is that
the Nigerian faculties of law end up exceeding their quota at the Nigerian law
school (each faculty of law is allowed to sell Law School forms to a particular
number of its students). The availability of these forms is dependent on how
highly the said Faculty of Law is rated by the Council of Legal Education. Some
Nigerian Faculties of law, despite the said rating, still admit more than their
prescribed quota so we have instances where a particular faculty of law is
entitled to say, 50 Law School Forms every year, but ends up graduating 250
students! Invariably, there is a backlog of students who eagerly await their
respective turns to obtain Law School Forms. These are fallouts from the
initial problem of admitting far more students than the faculty is entitled to.
· Lack of basic
facilities.
There is a need for Nigerian Faculties of Law to
conform to the ever increasing standards of legal practice, setbacks like poor
funding; lack of basic infrastructure; poor power supply, lack of standard
lecture halls, lack of Information Technology equipment and poorly equipped
libraries, inadequate accommodation and transport system problems. This is a
rather disturbing trend as many Nigerian Faculties of Law helplessly accept
these conditions and have somehow attuned themselves to them instead of
thinking outside the box. Thus, we have Law Students who are not I.T Compliant,
due to no fault of theirs, but because the system has not allowed them to be
so. It is generally believed that learning in a conducive environment enables a
student to assimilate much faster. When a student is taught in an environment
where he has no access to information, relevant books, good lecture halls,
basic amenities like electricity or water, he/she inevitably spends more time
attending to issues well outside the ambit of what he is taught in school.
Sadly, this is the lot of a good number of law students, It is thus obvious
that Nigerian law students are held back from fully developing their potentials
by poor facilities.
· Very few lecturers in faculties of law who actually
practise law.
· Incessant Industrial Actions.
HOW LEGAL
EDUCATION CAN BE IMPROVED
THE WAY
FORWARD
(A) Synergy
in curriculum between Nigerian Faculties of law and the Nigerian law school.
Over 70% of a Lawyer’s foundation is the job of the
University he/she attends. It is therefore important that the Universities
prepare a law student adequately for the complexities of legal practice. A
lawyer must not only demonstrate intelligence and great wit, he is also
supposed to be honest and above board. The issue is sometimes out of the hands
of the Universities as the foundation of some students might have been severely
damaged in Secondary School. Education in Nigeria is at its lowest ebb and even
though the authorities are rising to the challenge, there is still a lot to do.
At the Law School, a law graduate is introduced to the
ethics of the profession but one wonders if nine (9) months is not too short a
period for this. The Law Faculties could be made to incorporate professional
ethics into their curriculum over the five (5) sessions that a law student is
expected to spend in the University. Overtime, the ethics of the profession
become engraved in the minds of the law students who will most likely know them
by heart by the time they graduate.. It should also be a pre-condition that a
Law Student must be found worthy both in learning and in character before
he/she is sent to the Nigerian Law School
B) Rating of Faculties
Faculties of law in Nigeria should be rated annually.
This rating should be continuous with the parameters clearly stated. It should
also be the basis upon which law school forms are issued to these faculties of
law, regardless of their previous standing with the Council of Legal Education.
This way, there would be competition which would only bode well for the legal
profession in the long run as a favourable.
C) We must collectively
address the need for more skills-based and practice-oriented syllabus and scope
of learning within the existing calendar; promote compulsory pupillage for
young lawyers after graduation from the law school before graduates can
practice on their own; ensure adequate mentoring and a dignified and
sustainable welfare package for young lawyers to motivate them to work harder;
advocate for improved financing for qualitative academic legal education and
prudent management of resources at the universities/law faculties.
CONCLUSION
There is no doubt that legal education in Nigeria has
come a long way. We now have more campuses of the Nigerian law school than
before, more faculties of law, more law students and by extension, more
lawyers. This is an encouraging development but it is not enough. We need to
know that their quality is such that they can stand among the best in the world.
This should be our collective objective. Today’s lawyer lack adequate
preparation for the basics of legal practice and this lack of preparedness
stems from the problems already highlighted. There is a need to adjust legal
education in Nigeria to be more in tune with what obtains in the developed
parts of the world.We should aim not only to have as many lawyers as possible
but also to have lawyers we can be proud of at all times; both intellectually
and otherwise. We are not where we are supposed to be but we are also not where
we were before.
Resource Person:
Writers' Club, Faculty of Law,
Nasarawa State University
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