The Travails Of A New Wig In Nigeria And The Way Forward For A Rookie Lawyer

A new wig, on his first incursion into legal practice, realises that he has been inadequately inundated with skills during his training to become a lawyer. Despite the five years spent at the university and the one year at the Nigerian law school, the new wig still finds legal practice to be a very strange terrain. He realises that he has not been adequately prepared to practice law. He goes about making mistakes in all his endeavours; his advocacy skills are not developed; the court room becomes a place of terror for him, because of the embarrassment most judges and magistrates mete out to him as a result of the mistakes he will inadvertently make; he finds it intimidating negotiating with the police on a client’s behalf and; oftentimes does not know how to bill clients, amongst several other instances. His practice is an error strewn one. These culminate in his clients losing confidence in him and his ability to properly represent them. The new wig, at this point, usually, is left with no choice but to seek employment in the law firm of a more senior lawyer to garner the requisite experience before setting out on his own, a process known as pupilage, with its own myriad of challenges and disadvantages.

As can be easily garnered from above, clients are generally reluctant to retain new wigs, especially retainerships involving large interests or a huge amount of capital. These phenomenon results in the new wig finding it very difficult to get clients, and consequently legal briefs. A newly called lawyer who immediately ventures into practice may stay up to some months before he gets his first brief and even when it comes, it may not be too big or lucrative. This might culminate in the new wig becoming involved in untoward practices, such as advertising, touting and soliciting in other to get clients earning him the term “charge and bail lawyer”.

The Nigerian law school, since its inception in 1962, has produced more than 70, 000 lawyers . This figure is not inclusive of those lawyers who were called in the English Bar before the law school was established. It is noteworthy that a very high majority of this figure are very much alive. This high population of lawyers in the country results in the legal space being overcrowded and extremely competitive. It is not a strange occurrence to hear of lawyers jostling among themselves for briefs, sometimes employing untoward tactics in the process. The new wig is more at a disadvantage because of his inexperience and he oftentimes finds himself pitted against more senior lawyers in the context for briefs.