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Abstract

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Introduction

To qualify as a lawyer in Nigeria, you must have spent a minimum of five years (four years for direct entry students) at a university in Nigeria and one year at the Nigerian law school for a practical training course, which culminates in the Bar Final Examinations. Apart from the aforesaid, there are other ways of qualifying as a lawyer in Nigeria. However, it is the most common method of becoming a lawyer in Nigeria, and a majority of lawyers in the country passed through this process.

There is no gainsaying that to become a lawyer in Nigeria is no mean feat. The length of the process coupled with the high fees of the Nigerian law school, the high price of textbooks and other materials, the poor living conditions in most campuses of the Nigerian Law School, a not-student-friendly curriculum of the Nigerian Law School and the relative difficulty of the bar final examinations , all contribute to make qualifying to practice law a task not for the weak minded. Only the strong and financially buoyant survives.

Despite these challenges, people; whether old or young, rich or poor, gainfully employed or still under the care of parents, married or still single, etc., still clamour to study law and become lawyers. The number of candidates that apply for law in most Nigerian universities are estimated to be more than 6000 (though less than 200 of that number are usually admitted), making law the most sought after course for that year, in the university. Some prospective students even see it as a do-or-die affair. If they do not study law, then no other course will suffice for them. Some parents even insist that their wards must study law and become lawyers, despite the ward’s preference for another course of study. A majority of the prospective law students do not even have the requisite intellectual capacity to study the course, but they still force themselves on it, sometimes using untoward measures to gain admission to study the course, which usually culminates in them ending up as struggling students.

This profound attraction to law as a course of study is caused by the firmly held belief of the prospective lawyer that the profession is a noble one; it makes you respected and admired by all and sundry (the profession has “effizy”); it gives you the opportunity to fight for the rights of other people; it has more employment opportunities than other fields and; most importantly for some, it is financially lucrative. Prospective lawyers spend their youth hearing tales of the exploits of great lawyers; the likes of Chief Gani Fawehinmi, Chief F.R.A. Williams, Graham Douglas, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, to mention a few. They are impressed by the feats which these icons of the legal profession have achieved and their heads swoon with dreams and visions of emulating or even besting their legacy in the future. Thus, the prospective lawyer lives in an idealized world filled with vivid imaginations and fantasies of the beauty of the legal profession. This is evident in the manner many law students carry themselves in our Universities and at the Nigerian Law School – with a certain pride and an over-inflated self assurance.