Career path in law (2)

6. Compulsory pupilage

It is important to be affiliated to a law firm or an establishment that can oil your vision for your legal career. In deciding on a law firm, be on the lookout for the following characteristics:

1. The Owner of the Law Firm or Partners therein. Assuredly, the personality and pedigree of the head of any organisation will affect your future career. As they say, like father, like son.
2. A good library: It is important that a law firm should have the basic law books, such as the practice books and statute books, or other tools of learning and practice, including an online library.
3. Cases/briefs: A good and a well-equipped library needs cases and briefs to discover the law as hidden in the books. The cases bring law to you in a live form and they help you to garner experience, over the years.
4. Infrastructure:  Good modern facilities help drive passion and make legal practice more effective and attractive.

 

Essential features of pupillage:

1. Loyalty: You are required to be faithful to God, to the legal profession, to the law firm and to the clients. You have no choice in this matter if you are to go far. Once you cut the corner once, you lose reputation.
2. Consecration: You need to be sold out to your career pursuits. Avoid distractions of relationships, religion, politics, social media, businesses, etc. This is not the time for financial capacity, as that will surely follow, if the right foundation is built. As we were told by lawyers that mentored us, there is no lawyer who is hard working, God-fearing, courageous, honest and faithful to his clients that can ever go hungry or suffer. It is only a matter of time for the millions to start rolling in.
3. Diligence: Nothing works like hard work and the pursuit of excellence. Give attention to details, as most legal principles are developed around some basic arguments and propositions. You must have an innate capacity for endless research and discovery. Your main focus should be: How to find the law. You can hardly find any lawyer who sleeps through the night. Idleness is a destroyer, so avoid it and be usefully engaged almost all the time. Read the entire civil procedure rules of the courts as a novel, at least thrice, read the Evidence Act, read the Constitution, just keep reading and reading. Chief Gani Fawehinmi, SAN, once told me a saying that, ‘if you want a job done and done well; give it to a busy man’.
4. Integrity: This is like the main character of legal practice, which is built around nobility, honesty and faithfulness. Your character will either promote or destroy you. You may fool around for some time, but eventually your tricks will catch up with you. Take a conscious effort to practice with integrity, so that your word is your bond. The main outfit of lawyers is expressed in black and white, the black representing absolute sobriety and conservatism. A good lawyer is never loud or lousy, his words are few and weighty because he is always paid to talk. The white dress represents purity through which the lawyer becomes the conscience of society, practicing righteousness and transparency. This is why law is regarded as a noble profession. Say things as they are to your own hurt.
5. Duration: A minimum two years is required but the maximum time to spend in a law firm should be a personal decision, based upon several factors.
6. Appearance

Focus on both the inward and outward appearances. Be likeable and friendly. Embrace neatness and be modestly tasteful in appearance, if you can afford it. Do not repeat dresses without washing them, since the formal outfit involves a white inner wear, you cannot afford to mess it up. Give attention to everything, as the Judge, your principal, your clients and indeed the public, are all watching you. Look after your body, your hair, your mouth, your shoes, your nails, your clothes, your bibs and collars, your files, etc. As I was applying to join the Inner Bar, I already had an idea of my own unique outfits.

8. Comportment

Be courteous, friendly, courageous, firm in a gentle and responsible manner. Humility remains one of the greatest virtues of great people. Embrace humility but fear nobody. Let it be said always that people regret taking you for granted.

9. Always think deep

You need the power of introspection as you may have to think and think through your cases for many days on end, especially when you have to go for very complicated trials to cross-examine witnesses who are experts.

10. Be ready to learn

Do not be afraid of failure, so long as you learn from it. You will keep stumbling and falling, but be sure to rise up every time. Stay in court and listen to judgments being delivered, approach your colleagues and seniors, to seek clarification and guidance. You will most probably not learn the same thing twice once you master it well, but it is bad to make the same mistakes over and over.

11. Be prepared

The worst thing for a lawyer is to assume anything. Just go through and cross-check to be certain. The Bible is full of repetitions purely for emphasis. You expect what you inspect. Success is when good preparations meet with opportunities. The good lawyer is the one who has read his case file, the statute governing the case and the authorities on the point. And then he is well familiar with the case of the opponent.

12. Delayed gratification

Do not be too concerned with the good things of life so early. Suspend your expectations at the early stage of your career for a better tomorrow. Find a way to embrace self-discipline. With God on your side, you will eventually get there. Read Daniel 1: 1-20. There is no short cut in life. If you jump too early, the ground is waiting. If you bypass it, you will eventually come back to it. In this regard, money and pleasure should be the least worry of a lawyer who is aspiring to be successful. We are in the GenZ, where things happen so fast that the rest of us are considered old school. The cost of an apple does not in any way compare to that of a pack of pizza, but the difference in the body will show over time.

A lawyer needs time to grow, to mature and be ready to shape the world. It is difficult for a lawyer to succeed in a microwave generation as you need the requisite experience, mentoring and tutelage to navigate through legal practice. If you bypass this stage, it will show in your practice as you go along. Try and do it precept upon precept, line upon line and you will surely and certainly get there.

13. Be of good courage

Do not be afraid to try something new in your career path. Go through the books and develop new ideas. Bairaman J in Madukolu v Nkemdilim, developed the concept of jurisdiction, without any precedent. Timidity has no place in legal practice or else you will always return to your office defeated and deflated. You need the courage of a lion to operate as a lawyer, giving confidence to your clients and your colleagues working with you, even when there seems to be no way out.

14. Choose a mentor

A lot of people have made their marks in the legal profession in Nigeria. Study their backgrounds and adopt one or two persons as your mentors. You need them to guide you as they have gone through this path. You do not need to fight certain battles, if you have been well tutored and mentored. Upon my elevation to the Inner Bar, I moved around the offices of Senior Lawyers to get them to put me through, even though I had been in practice for decades then. You must however not be misled to copy anybody because of the glory when you do not know the story.

15. Avoid transactional lawyers

We hear and see a lot going on within the legal profession, whereby some who have no shame at all, have perfected the odious style of going through the backdoor to compromise justice through corrupt practices. You must have heard of the ignoble phrase of ‘jankara lawyers’, that is legal practitioners of wood and hay, paper weights who cannot go through the rigours of diligent study and have thus mastered crooked methods of cutting corners and bypassing the due process of law. They boast of bribing judges even when they do not have access to any Court registrar, they deceive their clients by making fake promises even when the facts of the case are so patently bad and unbendable. They police their cases to be assigned to judges of preference. You should have no business with such practice because it will not take you far at all.

 

Conclusion

 

Embrace godliness

The days of lawyers patronising secret societies and fake shrines in order to succeed are gone for good. Allow God to lead you, be content with what you have and do not seek to leap above your measure or live above your means. It is a matter of time, but surely, I know you will make it, through God, the help of others and your personal efforts.

In Eccl 12:13-14:

“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”

I wish you the very best in your career.

 

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