By
Ayuk Kure
One of the profound provisions of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners (RPC), 2007 is Rule 11 of the Rules. Rule 11 provides that “a lawyer who wishes to carry on practice as a legal practitioner shall participate in and satisfy the requirements of the Mandatory Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Programme operated by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA)”. The province of this work does not extend to the question whether lawyers have been abiding by this provision nor whether the NBA has been living up to its responsibility in terms of enforcement and provision of a clear-cut regulation for the smooth operation of the programme but this work seeks to probe the connotations of the Rule on Continuing professional development.
A careful perusal of Rule 11 will lead one to two inevitable conclusions. The first is that the legal training received by lawyers at the University and the law school levels is grossly inadequate to make them top-rated lawyers, hence the need for continuous professional development. In line with this point, it is posited that if one is armed with the knowledge of the law as taught by the university and the law school without anything more; it is mere superficial knowledge with little capacity to help the practitioner who is well armed with it. This writer further contends that there is a wide gap between what is taught at the university and the law school levels and what is obtainable in practice. This contention finds relevance in the fact that at the university level, the substantive aspect of the law is taught while at the law school level, the procedural aspect of the law is taught but never the practical aspect! Although some writers are of the opinion that the practical aspect of the law is taught at the law school but I beg to differ on that point. This is because, even though the ‘law students’ are usually sent on attachment to various courts and law firms in the country under the externship programme of the law school, they do not in actual fact participate in the proceedings of the courts and the activities of the law firms as qualified lawyers. During court externship for example, the law students merely sit to observe proceedings and take notes to fill out their log books. If the protagonists of this position say that this is law in practice then one may ask: Can sitting in the gallery to observe proceedings and take notes equate actually acting as a counsel in a matter and advancing a position and having that position challenged by an adverse party? I bet the answer is in the negative. The case is not any different during the law firm attachment as the students merely go to court to observe proceedings and draft documents which can never be served on the adversary.
This writer’s stance as espoused above admits only a few exceptions. The first and perhaps the only exception is if the law student (in the university and in the law school) was diligent enough to participate in extra-academic activities like moot and mock trials and he went to the extent of taking up roles like acting as a court registrar during the holidays, attempting to register an incorporated trustee (which registration can be undertaken by anyone), acting as a process server, observing court proceedings regularly, visiting land registries, attending legal seminars and workshops, participating in debate contests etc. These activities have the capacity of producing a thoroughly furnished new wig ready to take on the world of practice.
The second connotation of Rule 11 is that any lawyer who wishes to be effective in the practice of the law and also derive satisfaction from so doing as well as making good buck, he must place premium on continuing professional development. Any lawyer, who fails to continually develop himself, would soon become stale and no client will ever knock on his door.
Conclusively, I believe it was the realization of the above connotations that informed the drafting of Rule 11. If this Rule were observed to the letter, we would have more satisfied and happy clients. Thus, one can always tell that when a client complains about his or her lawyer, the lawyer has probably fallen short of the provision on mandatory continuing professional development.
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