10.28.08
The Nigerian Lawyer has a new domain
This is to announce that ‘The Nigerian Lawyer’ has acquired its domain and we will be posting articles and blogging from there. We have thoroughly enjoyed wordpress and I’ll recommend it any day and any time for bloggers and would be bloggers. It gives a professionalism to your blog and works wonderfully well with law blogs. However, it is time to grow and growth for us means The Nigerian Lawyer site at http://www.thenigerianlawyer.com.
Please update your feeds and do come visit us.
10.17.08
How the Traditional Role of Lawyers will Change
After years of talking with a wide variety of lawyers, I have found that many practitioners have one thing in common: they seem to want to deny that they are, well, lawyers. They downplay the legal content of their jobs.Private client lawyers (for example, those who advise on divorces or draft wills) tell me that their job is not really about the law; rather, they insist, they are experienced counsellors, confidantes, therapists even, in whom their clients have unwavering faith in relation to their personal problems.
In similar vein, litigators say that their primary role in life is that of project manager rather than provider of legal advice; corporate lawyers claim to be deal-makers and negotiators much less than legal draftsmen; capital market lawyers suggest they are transaction managers rather than gurus of finance law; in-house lawyers maintain they are risk managers more than legal counsellors; banking lawyers assert their clients come to them not for legal advice but for their market knowledge; and high street solicitors insist that they rarely undertake legal research. Even judges say that they are becoming . . . case managers.
Where have all the lawyers gone? Why are lawyers not undertaking the rarefied legal work that our law schools led us to expect (and many still do)?
A variety of reasons might be advanced for lawyers denying they are lawyers. One response might be that being a lawyer is, bluntly, not the coolest of jobs, and perhaps not as prestigious as once it was. There may even be a stigma of sorts attached to being a lawyer – hence the wealth of lawyer jokes. And so, in response, lawyers might be holding themselves out as belonging, at least in part, to another discipline.
I do not accept this line of thought. It may be that the ill-informed and the disconnected will trash the legal profession but in most walks of life lawyers remain well respected. In any event, I cannot imagine according to what scale it is cooler or more prestigious to be, say, a project manager than a lawyer, with all due respect to project managers.
It may be that lawyers often genuinely forget how much they know about the law and so do not regard themselves as especially lawyerly. Or perhaps they do not feel that it is their legal knowledge that differentiates them in the marketplace and so they point to complementary skills of which they are proud.
There is something different here, I believe, from yesteryear’s traditional role of the lawyer as the “man of affairs”, the all-purpose rock of an adviser upon whom clients could unfailingly rely. That old boy (and these chaps were invariably male) regarded the law, in contemporary jargon, as their core competence, around which they built more general business acumen.
In contrast, the modern lawyer, who is in denial of being lawyerly, seems to want argue that they have some different core competence and relegate their legal ability to the background or periphery. I believe this is an indicator of profound forces at play, forces that are lessening the need for the traditional “black letter” lawyer. When it becomes possible to standardise, systematise, package and even commoditise the law, the need for the traditional bespoke handling by the conventional lawyer lessens considerably.
Lawyers’ denial of their lawyerliness is an early but crucial indicator that they can sense there is less purely legal work to be done and so they are beginning to adapt. Whether they are fully conscious of this phenomenon or not, in order to survive, many are widening their range of skills, broadening their sphere of impact, and are anxious that the world does not pigeon hole them as detached analysts who sit in ivory towers. Most lawyers, in other words, can no longer eke a living from the law alone. >>>more.
Richard Susskind is Emeritus Professor of Law at Gresham College, IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice and consultant to leading law firms. He was awarded an OBE in 2000. This is an extract from his forthcoming book, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services. For more information click here
10.05.08
A Wiki Of Nigerian Law?
A wiki is a software which allows a group of users to freely add and edit articles on any subject. Wiki.Org defines a wiki as “a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser.” Wikipedia is probably the most successful wiki on the web.
One of the earliest legal wikis was created by Sun Microsystems in 2007; Between January and the start of September, there had been 1,200 articles published internally at Sun (Niraj Chokshi). In-house departments and Law Firms have begun using wikis. It is an effective method of publishing and keeping track of articles emanating from that law firm or in-house department.
Nigerian Wiki is probably the only Nigerian wiki available on the internet – if there are others, please let me know. Nigeria has a number of Law Firms and in-house departments; Legal Practitioners and Law students. Why can’t we come together and produce a wiki of Nigerian law? Any Lawyer could write an article on any aspect of Nigerian law and publish on the wiki; others would be able to edit and add to it until an authoritative position is produced on that area of law.
Think about it and if you are interested, please let me know. You could either leave a comment here, or send a mail to me at sharon {dot} famonure {at} gmail {dot} com.
10.03.08
The Future of Law and The End of Lawyers
One of the problems with being an author who makes predictions is that, eventually, you can be called to account. With the benefit of hindsight, critics can expose the misconceptions and the naiveties. Or, much less likely, they can confirm that the vision has been fully realised.In my book, The Future of Law, published in 1996, I made many predictions. When judging that book, however, commentators often overlook the fact that the view of the legal world set out there was a 20-year view. I was speculating about changes from 1996 to 2016 (give or take). Today, we are just past the half-way point of the 20-year transition and so it is still a little early to assert that I was right or wrong. That said, I think it worth saying that I remain committed to that book’s central themes and that we are on course for many of the fundamental changes I anticipated.
Perhaps the most crucial line of thought was that we were witnessing what I called a change in the “information substructure” in society. I used this term to refer to the dominant means by which information is captured, shared and disseminated within society. I observed, as some anthropologists have, that you can see that human beings have travelled through four phases in relation to information substructure: the first being the era of orality, where communication was dominated by speech; thereafter the era of script; then came print; and then, and we were in that transition then (and still are), into the fourth stage – of the world of information technology.
My next point, and I still strongly believe this, is that the information substructure in society – this dominant means by which information is captured, shared and communicated – dictates to a large extent the quantity of our law, the complexity of our law, the regularity with which our law can change, and those who are able to advise upon it and be knowledgeable about it.If we look at the way the law has changed throughout history, we can see transitions as the information substructure has changed. I argued that there was going to be a shift in legal paradigm (although now the notion of “paradigm” is rather overused). By this I meant that many of our fundamental assumptions about the nature of legal service and the nature of legal process would be challenged by the coming of information technology and the internet. In other words, much that we had always taken for granted in the past, about the way that lawyers work and the way non-lawyers receive legal guidance, would change through technology.
I also identified a phenomenon that I introduced as the “technology lag”. This was a lag between two forms of technology: data processing and knowledge processing. Data processing is our use of technology to capture, distribute, reproduce and disseminate information. We have become extremely adept at this. Indeed, everyone who bemoans the information overload that affects all of us will say we have become too good at data processing. But now, knowledge processing is coming to the rescue.This is a set of technologies that helps us analyse, sift through and sort out the mountains of data that we have created and helps make them more manageable. Data processing has advanced well ahead of knowledge processing, but the gap between the two – the technology lag – is going to close. When it closes, we will be fully in the information society.
I believe now, and I believed then, that we are in a transitional phase between the print-based industrial society and the IT-based information society. Only when knowledge-based technologies allow us to manage more effectively these mountains of data we have created, will we be fully in the information society.
I talked also of the “latent legal market”, and this attracted a lot of interest. This was the notion that many people in their social and in their working lives need legal help and would benefit from legal guidance but lack the resources, or perhaps simply the courage, to secure legal counsel from lawyers. I believe things have changed: on the internet we now have vast resources available to people who, from the Government’s 2,500 websites or the innumerable voluntary legal services sector websites, can obtain practical, punchy legal guidance. I believe there is not just a latent legal market for the ordinary citizen but also for major organisations, too, when they find it difficult to secure legal guidance on all those occasions when they need it. All of this led me to speak about access to justice – not in the sense that Lord Woolf, the former Lord Chief Justice, was then speaking of access to justice, when he referred to improved access and greater access to dispute resolution – but in a broader sense. I had in mind the notion that as citizens we should be able to find out easily and quickly what our legal entitlements are, and in so doing, we should be able to avoid legal disputes. >>>more.
Richard Susskind is Emeritus Professor of Law at Gresham College, IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice and consultant to leading law firms. He was awarded an OBE in 2000. This is an extract from his forthcoming book, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services. For more information click here
09.19.08
Law In The Modern World: Obsolete Or Innovative?
The recent years have witnessed the near complete arrogation of traditional ways of conducting business, by the rapid metamorphosing of Information Technology (IT). In Nigeria, the giant leap has been made from the long queues synonymic with the bureaucratic process to online filings and registrations. The times are rapidly changing.
In view of this, it is necessary, if not mandatory to examine the role of the lawyer in the immediate and distant future. What is the future for law practise as we know it today? This is the basis of the six part draft excerpt from Richard Susskind’s book, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of legal services. He explains in the first draft that his aim is “… to explore the extent to which the role of the traditional lawyer can be sustained in coming years in the face of challenging trends in the legal marketplace and new techniques for the delivery of legal services.”
This is the spirit behind THE NIGERIAN LAWYER. Times are a changing and legal practitioners need to change with it. Law practise as we know it may not exist in the years to come. In order to remain relevant as lawyers, new approaches to practising law need to be explored. Richard Susskind puts it succinctly:
“…for all lawyers to introspect, and to ask themselves, with their hands on their hearts, what elements of their current workload could be undertaken differently – more quickly, cheaply, efficiently, or to a higher quality – using alternative methods of working. In other words, the challenge for legal readers is to identify their distinctive skills and talents, the capabilities that they possess that cannot, crudely, be replaced by advanced systems or by less costly workers supported by technology or standard processes, or by lay people armed with online self-help tools.
I will argue that the market is increasingly unlikely to tolerate expensive lawyers for tasks (guiding, advising, drafting, researching, problem-solving and more) that can equally or better be discharged, directly or indirectly, by smart systems and processes. It follows that the jobs of many traditional lawyers will be substantially eroded and often eliminated. At the same time, I foresee new law jobs emerging which may be highly rewarding, even if very different from those of today.”
(Read the whole article here).
Insisting on the undeviating practise of traditional law will, without a doubt, render such a practitioner obsolete and inapposite in the years to come. The solution, if Lawyers seek continued relevance not just in cases involving complex legalities is to bring to bear innovative and creative methods to the legal practise.
Richard Susskind is Emeritus Professor of Law at Gresham College, IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice and consultant to leading law firms. He was awarded an OBE in 2000. This is an extract from his forthcoming book, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services.
08.19.08
Free Course on Blogging
I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.
It covers:
- The best blogging techniques.
- How to get traffic to your blog.
- How to turn your blog into money.
I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.
08.11.08
How Secure is a Password?
By Randall Stross
THE best password is a long, nonsensical string of letters and numbers and punctuation marks, a
combination never put together before. Some admirable people actually do memorize random strings of characters for their passwords – and replace them with other random strings every couple of months.
Then there’s the rest of us, selecting the short, the familiar and the easiest to remember. And holding onto it forever.
I once felt ashamed about failing to follow best practices for password selection – but no more. Computer security experts say that choosing hard-to-guess passwords ultimately brings little security protection. Passwords won’t keep us safe from identity theft, no matter how clever we are in choosing them.
That would be the case even if we had done a better job of listening to instructions. Surveys show that we’ve remained stubbornly fond of perennial favorites like “password,” “123456″ and “LetMeIn.” The underlying problem, however, isn’t their simplicity. It’s the log-on procedure itself, in which we land on a Web page, which may or may not be what it says it is, and type in a string of characters to authenticate our identity (or have our password manager insert the expected string on our behalf).
This procedure – which now seems perfectly natural because we’ve been trained to repeat it so much – is a bad idea, one that no security expert whom I reached would defend.
Password-based log-ons are susceptible to being compromised in any number of ways. Consider a single threat, that posed by phishers who trick us into clicking to a site designed to mimic a legitimate one in order to harvest our log-on information. Once we’ve been suckered at one site and our password purloined, it can be tried at other sites.
The solution urged by the experts is to abandon passwords – and to move to a fundamentally different model, one in which humans play little or no part in logging on. Instead, machines have a cryptographically encoded conversation to establish both parties’ authenticity, using digital keys that we, as users, have no need to see.
In short, we need a log-on system that relies on cryptography, not mnemonics.
As users, we would replace passwords with so-called information cards, icons on our screen that we select with a click to log on to a Web site. The click starts a handshake between machines that relies on hard-to-crack cryptographic code. The necessary software for creating information cards is on only about 20 percent of PCs, though that’s up from 10 percent a year ago. Windows Vista machines are equipped by default, but Windows XP, Mac and Linux machines require downloads.
And that’s only half the battle: Web site hosts must also be persuaded to adopt information-card technology for sign-ons.
We won’t make much progress on information cards in the near future, however, because of wasted energy and attention devoted to a large distraction, the OpenID initiative. OpenID promotes “Single Sign-On”: with it, logging on to one OpenID Web site with one password will grant entrance during that session to all Web sites that accept OpenID credentials.
08.05.08
Virtual Office I: Learning the Basics
Starting a new business can be quite tricky and expensive especially when you have to think of overhead costs. Setting up a law practice is no different; it is a business in the true sense of it. Therefore, when there are limited resources, other options need to be explored. One of such options, is the virtual office. This is Part I of a 3 Series article. Watch out for the other parts.
What is a Virtual Office?
A virtual office is a work environment, which is not tied down to a specific location. It has been defined as an environment that enables a network of co-workers to run a business efficiently by using nothing other than online communication technologies. It is also a common term for shared office services, which normally includes business address, mail & courier services, phone services, fax services, answering services, web-hosting services, and meeting & conference facilities. (Answers.Com).
What do you need to set one up?
Technically, your virtual office is wherever you are; it could be in your home, inside your car, on the beach, anywhere you find yourself. You are not tied down to a specific address. However, you might find it necessary to create a workspace at home, where you can work uniterrupted. If you are running your office from home, you might not want your business to have the same address as your home. So what do you do? There are a few options: you could either rent a post office box for your business, use a friend’s office address or use a Commercial Mail Receiving Agency (I do not know how readily available these are in Nigeria).
If you decide to operate this way, you will require certain equipment to successfully run your virtual office.
- Computer: If your work involves a lot of traveling, you might consider getting a laptop computer. Laptop computers range in price from the brand names like HP to Dell and other home grown computers like Omatek and Zinox. However, if you do not do much traveling, a standard Destktop system will do the job.
- Internet Connection: A very good internet connection is imperative. With a USB flash drive, you could probably go to a cybercafe and get all your work done. But with the high rate of cyber crime, it is not expedient or even wise to expose highly confidential material, such as you will be dealing with. You need some degree of security and that will be guaranteed – to some extent, by getting your own private internet connection. In Nigeria, there are a couple of ISPs; the most affordable seems to be the Starcomms broadband. However, I have used DOPC (Direct on PC) provided by Unwired for several months now and I’ve found their services satisfactory but they are only available in Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt.
- Printer: A black and white 600-1200 dpi laser printer if your final documents require crisp, high quality black and white output. Laser printers also provide the fastest output, so if you know your volume will be high you should also consider a laser printer. A color laser printer if your documents need high quality color illustrations, photos, or charts. These are quite expensive so make sure you compare the print quality with a less expensive ink jet printer. An inkjet printer if you need good quality text, color charts and graphs, or photos. With ink jet printers, the paper that is used often makes the biggest difference in the print quality. Get paper that is best suited for the job you are doing. Also, try to get a test print from different models to compare quality before you buy. Ink jets can provide very good quality but are not as fast printing as laser printers. (How Stuff Works)
- Scanner/Copier/Fax Machine: You will need all of these at one point in time or the other. You can request the soft copy of documents from your clients, but there are certain others that you will need to photocopy and maybe scan, such as Court processes, Leases and other such documents.
For the same reason, you will need a Fax Machine. This is because, a good percentage of your clients are people you will most likely never see. This affords them an option to scanning. In the alternative, there are several fax to email services on the internet such as eFax, which enable you for a minimal fee, to receive fax messages as emails. Free Fax to Email, like the name implies, offers free services.
- Alternative Power Supply: Let’s not forget that this is Nigeria we are talking about. You cannot afford to rely on the National Power supply (Power Holding Company of Nigeria). They are erratic. Your clients reside in different time zones and countries, they would find it hard to understand that you did not meet a deadline due to a lack of power supply. Therefore you need either a generator or an inverter; or in most cases both.
Software:
- An email address: This definitely goes without saying. There are several free email services on the internet such as Yahoo, Hotmail and GMail.
- A website/blog: This is your presence on the internet. It is where your clients will find you. Read this on how to create a blog.
- A word processor: The most popular is Microsoft Word. But this is quite expensive. A lot of people use Lotus, however, I personally use Star Writer by Sun systems. It works just fine for me and because it is open source, it is also free.
- Spreadsheet and database programs: Microsoft Excel, Intuit QuickBase and Star Base, which is free.
- Presentation Software: Microsoft PowerPoint or Star Office
- Antivirus: This is necessary to protect your system from harmful virus especially since you will be connected to the internet. Some good ones are Norton Antivirus, Mcafee and Avast.
- Adobe Acrobat Reader:
- Graphics/Image Editor:
- Internet Browser: You can use Internet Explorer but my personal preference is Mozilla Firefox.
This is it for now. In the next part, the following questions will be answered:
How do you hold meetings? What if you need an assistant, how do you employ?
Let me know if this article was useful to you. If there is anything you would like to know about Virtual Offices, drop a comment and I’ll blog about it.
If you would like to download the free Open Office suite, click here.
07.11.08
Book Review: Sisters in Law
Title: Sisters in Law: Career Choices for Nigerian Women Lawyers
Authors: Boma Ozobia & Elizabeth Cruickshank
Review By: Sharon Famonure
When I first saw this book, my first thought was that it was about the lives of some sisters-in law. Having read it through (twice), I have come to the conclusion that this is not just a book but a practical guide for Nigerian women lawyers.
The women portrayed in this book cut across diverse backgrounds and inclinations. They however had one thing in common…the Law and family. They each successfully combined both and achieved outstanding results.
One of such women is Uju Aisha Hassan Baba, the Direcotr General of the Legal Aid Council. After several years as a prosecutor in the Ministry of Justice, She made the move from prosecutor to ‘Chief Public Defender’ in 1999. After an initial adjustment period, Uju Aisha Hassan Baba rolled up her sleeves and went to work with such zeal and enthusiasm; from Prison yard to Court Room, her passion spills over.
During my stint as a corp member with the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), I had regular contact with the Legal Aid Commission and got to hear of the incredible service this spectacular woman was rendering. I also became quite familiar with the mission statement of the Commission, ‘Giving Voice to the Voiceless.’ It was therefore with a bubbling sense of excitement that I turned to the section which had her interview in the book and I was not disappointed. She is every bit the dynamic woman I had suspected her to be. Her advice for female lawyers is spot on:
” From the very beginning every female lawyer must be sincere and hardworking. You need to take every case seriously and you have to put all that you have into it. Without hard work, you will not succeed.“
Quite a number of eminent women in the profession featured in the book, but one in particular stands out boldly in my memory. This is Sena Anthony. She is the Group General Manager, Corporate Secretariat and Legal Division and Secretary to the Corporation of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC). She is not just the first woman to chair the International Bar Association (IBA) Section on Energy and Natural Resources, but is also the first African.
This sister in law made me see the beauty in being an in house counsel; reading her interview made me want to be an in house counsel. She gently and patiently takes the reader through the multi-faceted abilities and the versatility of the in house lawyer. This is certainly an eye opener; as Sena Anthony puts it:
“We really have to have a knowledge of everything. We need to know about Aviation Law and the Law relating to Goods and Services; as in-house lawyers we really have to have a broad base of legal knowledge.“
The book, Sisters in Law reads like an accolade of the women who have climbed unto the highest platforms of their chosen areas of law with notable ’sisters’ like Funke Adekoya who is the Managing Partner of AELEX Legal Practitioners and Arbitrators and is also one of only 5 women who are Senior Advocates of Nigeria; or the inestimable Yinka Omorogbe, Professor of Law and Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Ibadan (my almer mater). Professor Yinka Omorogbe is a consultant on Energy Law and Policy, Managing Director of the Centre for Petroleum, Environment and Development Studies and the General Secretary on the Nigeria Society of International Law. These women and their contemporaries mentioned in Sisters in Law, have a number of achivements to their name. The authors are no exception.
Growing up in the Oil City of Nigeria, Port Harcourt, Boma Ozobia, one of the authors of the book experienced first hand, the challenges faced by lady lawyers in Nigeria yet she did not let that hold her down. She qualified both in Nigeria and in the United Kingdom. She is the founding partner of Sterling Partnership Solicitors LLP and was Chairwoman of the Association of Women Solicitors of England and Wales in 2005. She is a highly principled person and her belief in hard work and determination come across clearly as one reads through the live of the different women she writes about. She is one of those inimitable women who have successfully combined law practice and a home life.
Elizabeth Cruickshank, author of “Women in the Law” and Editor of Link, the magazine of the Association of Women Solicitors of England and Wales is another outstanding woman. She was Chairwoman of the Association of Women Solicitors in 2004, and in 2005 was given the Era Crawley Award for services to women solicitors. She is certainly a role model to young lawyers; she has shown me that it is indeed possible to ‘have it all:’ a fulfilling career and a happy home.
Sisters in Law is a compulsory read for all young female lawyers. When I was at the University and even at law school, I had no mentors to look up to; no doubt they existed but of who they were and how to find them, I was totally clueless. If I’d had this book, it would have been a different story.
