By Innocent Anaba

Majority of Nigerian Lawyers are of the opinion that the Administration of Justice in Nigeria is very slow and inefficient. Furthermore, they opined that the inefficiency of the system is mostly as a result of the delays caused by legal practitioners. This was the result of a recent survey carried out recently and revealed at the Nigerian Bar Association’s Section on Legal Practice Conference in Makurdi, Benue State.

At the plenary session titled “Justice Delivery at the Speed of Light: Tools and Tips for the Busy Practitioner,” the MD of LawPavilion, Mr. Ope Olugasa showcased how 17 state Judiciaries and several leading Law Firms have adopted digital tools in partnership with LawPavilion to drive speedy administration of justice.

He also presented the results of an extensive survey conducted recently by the firm. Participation in the survey was exclusively limited to legal practitioners, to ensure a more informed opinion of the real issues plaguing the industry. He said 88.8 percent of Nigerian Lawyers agree that the Administration of Justice in Nigeria, especially through the Courts is very slow and inefficient, while 9.2 percent disagree. In his words, “some of the results have been what we expected, but some have been a bit shocking and quite revealing as to the actual challenges of justice delivery and administration in Nigeria.

Political influence

In response to a request to list top five issues contributing to the inefficiency in the Nigerian Justice delivery through the courts, the survey highlighted what most Legal Practitioners considered as the top 10 issues responsible for the inefficiency. Olugasa expressed his surprise that almost 50% of the participants opined that the inefficiency of the system was as a result of the delays caused by legal practitioners.

Following closely is the 42 percent that believe political influence on Judges and Magistrates is also a major issue, while 36.3percent said lack of thorough investigation of criminal allegations is a front burner. Other top issues raised, in descending order of contribution to the inefficiency in the system are: Insufficient number of Judges and Magistrates – 33.3 percent, Absence of ICT tools – 29.7 percent, Weak Enforcement of Judgments – 29.1 percent, Absence of Proactive Case Management by Judges and Magistrates – 26.2 percent, Absence of Effective and Thorough Appraisal of Judges – 23.2
percent and Sharp Practices by Legal Practitioners – 21.8 percent. He said the percentage contribution of the issues would not sum to 100 percent since each participant was to pick 5 issues.

A survey participant was quoted thus: “There should be multiple approaches to delays caused by legal practitioners. These approaches will include:

(a) General restructuring of the nature of law offices to eliminate sole practitionership and build up chambers with many active associates/partners. At present, though we have large number of lawyers graduating every year, there is no corresponding impact on speedy determination of cases. The absence of effective partnership and large number of sole practitioners translates into delays the moment the practitioner becomes indisposed or for any reason is not able to come to court on time.

The result is an adjournment.” Olugasa, although while not totally agreeing with the view of the participant, believes the underlying issue to be looked at is that of capacity by law firms, as many of them are obviously overwhelmed with volume of work.

In LawPavilion’s characteristic way of innovatively crafting solutions for the Legal Industry, Ope Olugasa swiftly itemised and highlighted a few tips and possible solutions to some of the main issues expunged by the survey.

Pointing the audience’s attention to the fact that Lawyers spend 60 to 70 percent of their time on Legal Research, Olugasa demonstrated how the use of electronic search engines and e-library platforms like LawPavilionin conducting legal research while preparing for cases will help save valuable time and increase speed of legal research.

He said LawPavilion Search Engine, widely acknowledged as the leading provider of electronic law report and legal research service in Nigeria, searches across 44 years consolidated index scanning through over 9,000 judgments of the Supreme Court and Court of  Appeal, over 300 Laws of the Federation and Civil Procedure Rules of the Courts.

He said, with over 80,000 principles of law covering several legal areas, it’s performance and efficiency cannot be compared to manual search. Assuring the audience of the Nigerian Judiciary’s acceptance of Electronic Law Reports, he said the LawPavilion Electronic Law report, fully paginated and paragraphed, is extensively cited in both the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal as LPELR. An example is the case of Chief S.S. ObarovsAlhaji Sale Hassan, delivered on 22nd February 2013 by the Supreme Court of Nigeria.

Since the world is becoming a global village, Mr Olugasa recommends that Judges and Legal Practitioners need to be abreast of how other jurisdictions like Ghana and Tanzania have used proactive case management and application of robust Rules of Court to change the face and wave of justice delivery in their countries since 1999, in the case of Tanzania.

In addition, he revealed that the company recently launched a Case Management System for Nigerian lawyers and Judges at the International Bar Association Conference, held in Boston, Massachusetts, United States in October 2013.Explaining further, the LawPavilion Case Management System ensures full compliance with global best practice Project Management processes listed as: Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and Control and Closing. It also monitors cases and helps to stay abreast of all intricate details such as Cause List, task list management, Timer/Billing, etc, and even plots a graph of resource allocation to each case file in the office, measuring staff performance to drive efficiency.

Perhaps, the high point of the event was when Mr. Olugasa focused on the Criminal Justice System by demonstrating the new LawPavilion IPO/DPP ADVISORY SYSTEM, designed to eliminate the incessant blame passing between the DPP’s office and the Nigerian Police on the issue of DPP’s advice. The software solution allows the Public Prosecution department of Ministries of Justice to fully integrate with the Investigating Police Officers, providing them with templates for effective capture of the essential ingredients of crime and monitors the request for advice, escalating any delay to superior officers in the Ministry of Justice

He said that Lawpavilion is willing to partner with Ministries of Justice that intends implementing this solution.