Etomi: Running With the Law

Chairman, Section on Business Law of the Nigerian Bar Association, Mr. George Etomi was at the just-concluded International Bar Association’s Annual Conference, not just to attend, but to look into how the SBL can key into current worldwide trends in the practice of law. One of the contacts he made was with an American company of business advisors and counselors to the legal profession to explore the possibility of partnering with the Section to improve legal management practices and business results in Nigerian legal practice. He spoke with FUNKE ABOYADE at the Chicago venue of the conference about this initiative, amongst others.

Learning from the IBA

One important reason for coming to the IBA is to watch for myself how the IBA organises its activities.  It's important that we learn the right things, take what is relevant to our situation and then try to improve on our own general performance.  The first observation when I got in here was that the opening ceremony was brief and devoid of the sort of speeches that tend to attend what we do back at home.

We had the IBA President speak, then the keynote speech was given by (former US Majority Senate Leader) Senator George Mitchell and then, we had the two chairpersons of the Divisions - the equivalent of our own Sections - speak, and that was it. 

The key thing is that the IBA rests on a tripod, the President and then the two Divisions - in our case it’s the two Sections. One thing we must understand is that except we strengthen the Sections back in Nigeria, the NBA will continue to do things in a manner that will never get it out the way it should properly be there.  I'm always one for saying that you must get the IBA to professionally encourage lawyers to improve on their various performances, and the best way to do it is to ensure that those Sections are strengthened.

Partnering with Those Who’ve Been There

To particularise this, the SBL will always try to do its best to ensure that we look at international standards as our own modus for doing our own things. To this end, we organised a dinner where we met Norman Clark. Norman Clark works with Walker Clark; it's a group of retired lawyers who have had long experience in managing situations with law firms. What they do is that they give general advice to small to medium sized law firms - from everything to do with the way the firms are organised, to the way they market. So basically, to help you deal with those daily issues that tend to prevent you from growth.

For example, one key component of what they do is, how do you deal with Associates who leave you? Why do they leave you? And that’s a particularly difficult issue in Nigeria. It's like the chicken and the egg; do you train Associates when you know they will leave? Or they’re future or potential competitors? Or do you let your firm stagnate because you’re refusing to invest money in Associates?

It's a big issue and it will be interesting to know how they've done it. They've done extensive work in other emerging economies like in Latin America and some areas in Asia if I recollect, but they've not done any work in Africa.  It's interesting that we have made contact with them to see what sort of areas of cooperation we can develop between the Section (on Business Law) and them with a view to guiding our members, especially the firms about how they can deal with frequently encountered problems of managing law firms in Nigeria.

Bonds of Cooperation with IBA

Then of course, other activities of the IBA that have interested me have been the Committee work. In particular, I have actually come close to the Arbitration Committee (of the IBA), where perhaps as you know by now, Dorothy Ufot is Vice-Chairman and recently also, she got elected to be a Council Member of the Legal Practice Division, the equivalent again of our own SBL - quite an honour. One of the things she is pushing for is for the Committee to partner with the SBL to hold one of their regional conferences in Nigeria. I attended a dinner with them (during the conference) , I got to meet a good number of the Committee members - very active Committee, good people, diverse backgrounds, different countries - all with one goal, which is to ensure that Arbitration stays in the forefront as one of the Dispute Resolution Mechanisms that you can have. We did extract a promise that after our elections they will come to Nigeria. If that happens, it will be a major, major boost to our activities in the Section on Business Law. 

Apart from that, we will be looking at other ways we can cooperate with the IBA, because when the Sections were in the first place inaugurated, our aim was to sort of do things the way the IBA does it. I'm sure, looking at how this conference is organised, the IBA always organises its conferences very well and there's so much we can learn from it.

Making Our Size Work for Us

One disturbing feature though is that there are so many Nigerian lawyers participating in these conferences, but in terms of the distribution of responsibilities and perhaps the benefits, I don’t think we get a commensurate value for the numbers that we show here.  Partially due to our fault, because many of our lawyers who come here don't really get involved in Committee activities.

Secondly, they don't, as it were, keep their eyes to the ground, as they say.  But by and large, if you don't make the point then nobody gives you anything for free and I think it is important for us to make our numbers count. If you look through IBA activities year in, year out we are, apart from perhaps the host cities or countries, the second or third largest delegation that always comes and it will be my joy to see that we benefit from these activities.

Now, the one good thing about all of this is that perhaps we can begin to send the message back home that what atimes you come so far out to look for, you can actually replicate at home.  And if people are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of Naira to come for these sorts of conferences, then perhaps if we charge modest fees in Nigeria and we give a guarantee that they will have no less quality in terms of the programme details, the contents and the other benefits, that it will be worth spending such money in Nigeria because numbers is what makes this game work. If we get the correct numbers at the right prices we can always give high quality work.

Choice of Conference Venue Important

On a lighter note, it’s important in these conferences to see what the city has to offer and when we organise conferences in Nigeria we tend to downplay the importance of knowing the city that we are visiting, because conferences, apart from learning, are opportunities to network and opportunities to also widen your scope in terms of your geographical knowledge of the areas that you go to.  And Chicago is undoubtedly a beautiful city. From the conference venue itself, which is another story, there is so much the city has to offer: The Magnificent Mile, the Great Lake - Lake Michigan which describes the entire city, makes it such a spectacle. It was very relaxing, one of the most relaxing times I have personally experienced. There is so much to talk about.  This IBA and the Prague one, but all IBA conferences tend to be first class, I think so much goes into the choice of venues.

Talking about choice of venues, that’s another thing I want to us to learn in Nigeria. We shouldn't choose venues out of sentiment, we should choose venues for the practical value they can add to the conferences. There's no point adding people to a city in Nigeria that is the least prepared already to host conferences for thousands of lawyers. It just makes people suffer for nothing! We should begin to move to the point where we get cities, even if it’s through the branches, to compete for hosting these conferences and not making it a mandatory rotational thing.  Yes, there's some value in us going round the country so we can know it, but I think there’s greater value in getting people to compete for things so that we begin, as we say, to set the standards and raise the  standard of practice in Nigeria. Law is a lot, lot more than just knowing your Decrees and your Acts and wherever it is. It broadens your scope. The more as a lawyer you know and understand the environment about you, the better you can apply it to the raw work that you do. So, it's so key for us to understand how these things work.

I talked about visiting places, that's also very important, there are good places, good sites in Nigeria, and that we can improve upon it.

Senior Lawyers Should Encourage Younger Ones

The senior lawyers must encourage the junior ones to attend these conferences. Even if it’s paying for them, at least in the minimum, subsidising their attendance, it will make good sense because there's a Young Lawyers Forum in the IBA, and it was good. I interacted personally with lots of young lawyers from other jurisdictions. We didn't have that much in number for all the size of our delegation, that we could boast of. So, we should begin to look at that real possibility of encouraging younger lawyers to attend these conferences by sponsoring or subsidising them.

Then of course, we look forward to the next conference we understand is going to be in Singapore, and after Singapore I'm told reliably it's going to be in Argentina, then Madrid after that.

SBL Already Setting International Standards

The full time Administrator of the Section on Business Law - in fact, the correct title is Director of Administration - Mrs. Ifueko Alufohai, will be going for a two-week internship training course with the Law Society in England, beginning sometime next week. During that period, she will understudy how they run their own Sections because they also have Sections in the Law Society. And then, she will also be talking to the British/Nigeria Law forum where she’ll discuss issues of mutual interest between both organisations with regard to developing law across both ends of the divide. She’ll also attend the opening of the legal year. We believe that the cumulative effect of this sort of experience is that she’s going to come back and help organise the Section in a manner that would mimic what goes on abroad. 

As we’ve always said, our standard is the international standard and what we’re doing is to expose our Administrators to how these things are done overseas. Looking at how the Chicago conference has been organised, you can see that dealing with several thousands of lawyers wasn't a problem - at least, not on the face of it - because everything appeared to have been taken care of. Managing numbers is one of the biggest challenges we have in Nigeria and in our conferences where you have three, four, five thousand lawyers coming, the place is so chaotic, you don't have materials, you can’t  find your way through anything, there are hardly any signposts and all that, so it just takes the edge out of what you seek to achieve. We are hoping that through the example the SBL will show, we can show them we can do these things in Nigeria.

That way we’ll attract more and more visitors from overseas, more interactions with international organisations and get the true benefits of what law practice should be to Nigerian lawyers at large.