Are Lawyers Liars?

Are lawyers liars? Jii opens the very first episode of How We Live by putting that old accusation to Kolade Adegbola, Esquire, and the answer turns out to be more interesting than yes or no. From there: what the law actually is (Kolade calls it "a means of setting human interactions right"), why so many Nigerians only reach for it in a fight, and how most of us underuse the one thing quietly protecting almost everything we own.

Along the way, why he stumbled into law while wanting to be a journalist, what law school in Lagos does to a person, and the difference between a Barrister and an Esquire that the Supreme Court has actually ruled on. This is not legal advice. It is an attempt to understand the law as it touches ordinary Nigerian life.

How We Live is an Inskriba production. The conversation continues in writing at inskriba.com.

Jii: So growing up, I had this idea. I do not think it was only me. It was among everybody I grew up with, and even older people, younger people. The idea was that lawyers are liars. Or that they were liars. I do not know if people still believe that. It was not in a cruel way, that they go out and manipulate reality, or blatantly lie, or that you say this is red and a lawyer will come and say it is blue. Most times it was almost a joke, but it was also how people recognised the profession. Are you liars?

Kolade: Well, every lawyer would have heard that. We still hear it today. People still say it today, that lawyers are liars. Technically, lawyers are not liars. But there is a but to it. We do our job in the best interest of our clients. And sometimes that can include some manipulation, with oratory prowess usually. The main goal is not to lie, because people say it as if lawyers set out to lie. Lawyers do things in the best interests of our clients.

Kolade: The way our justice system works is who can present their case in court best. So if you can prepare your argument, convince the judge and everything. That is why a lawyer would give an argument and state facts that support the case of his client. That is basically what lawyers do. It means a lawyer who defends something today on behalf of his client can tomorrow be found on the other side, arguing the other way on behalf of another client. Because it is what you can argue and defend in court that is the truth. There is usually no objective truth.

Kolade: But there are some lawyers who outrightly lie. That, we call professional misconduct. It is wrong to lie and to mislead the court with wrong facts and wrong arguments.

Jii: That is interesting. Whoever your client is at that point in time is the truth. That is where the truth starts from. Like you said, your job is to defend the best interests of your client. And it is funny, because in a matter of minutes you can be on the other side.

Jii: What I have realised, growing up with that idea that lawyers are liars, is that it is lazy. But at the same time, thinking about it: Nigerian parents would say, these are the professions, be a lawyer, be a doctor, be an engineer. It never really happened to me. I was not forced into it, and I do not think I wanted to become a lawyer. But I always admired lawyers because of the way they talk, the dressing, the way you carry yourselves. I think that is the prestige.

Jii: Anyway, it is interesting for you to set the record straight, and I thought we should start with that. For everybody listening, this is How We Live from Inskriba, a show that tries to understand how we live as Nigerians. So we are talking about law, health, money. This is the very first episode, and I am here with, do you want to introduce yourself?

Kolade: I am Kolade Adegbola, Esquire.

Jii: Esquire and Barrister, are they interchangeable?

Kolade: They are both appellations for a lawyer. Esquire is kind of like saying Mister something something, but meant for the legal profession. Barrister is more like saying Doctor something something. I am trying to look for the best way to put it. Esquire is the generic appellation. But on Barrister, the Supreme Court has actually ruled on it, funny enough. That it is wrong for a lawyer to introduce themselves as, my name is Barrister so and so. It is just Esquire.

Kolade: There are a lot of court judgments, a lot of funny stuff. There is a court judgment concerning the fact that a man must provide for his wife.

Jii: So that is what we set out to talk about on How We Live. This episode we talk about law, we will move on to money. But one thing we must make clear: this is in no situation, place or time legal advice for any situation, for anyone. This is just me having a conversation about the law as it relates to Nigerians. So wait, if I introduce you as Barrister, have I committed a crime?

Kolade: No, it is not essentially a crime. It is what I would call ethics of the profession. Ethics and guiding principles, because law is a very [inaudible] profession that is done according to the letter. What is done and said must be according to what is written.

Jii: Interesting. And thank you for helping us understand that. But I like Esquire. It makes the introduction sweet.

Kolade: It sounds sweet, kind of.

Jii: Let us go into how you became a lawyer. Maybe not how, but what happened? Why did you become a lawyer? What did you see? Did you experience something with the law? Were you part of the Nigerian growing up where your parents said you have to become a lawyer?

Kolade: Actually, my journey into becoming a lawyer is very, very unusual and very uncertain. I would rather say I stumbled into being a lawyer. Right from childhood, my desire had always been to be a journalist. There was the press club in secondary school. Science students would be in the JETS Club and I would be in the Press Club. So I always wanted to be a journalist.

Kolade: Then the school I chose. Nigerian parents always want their children to attend the school they attended. My dad attended Obafemi Awolowo University, so I must attend OAU. It is a very good school. And OAU at that time did not have mass communication. I think they do now, but at that time they did not. Even though my dad actually wanted me to do law, he was open to what I was interested in: follow that, no problem. But now that they did not have the course I wanted, let me just do what he would really love me to do. So I put in for law, I got in, and that was how I found myself in law.

Kolade: But then, when I got in, I realised that a lot of us studying law did not really have a passion for it, so to say. Because in Nigeria, once you are a very brilliant student in art class, you are a lawyer. Once you are a brilliant student in commercial class, you are an accountant, or you go into finance. Science students, medicine and engineering. So that was just how a lot of us found ourselves in the faculty of law then.

Kolade: Law really started to make sense to me when I got to law school.

Jii: So, five years?

Kolade: Yes.

Jii: Five years plus strike. So for the whole duration of your stay in OAU, were you coasting?

Kolade: Yes, I was just coasting. There was even a point where, it is not that my parents were not sponsoring me, I would just drop out and go and do something else. There is a way Nigerian universities can take even something you love so much and make you hate it, because of the way the system is. From lecturers to lecture rooms to school management. But then, from the beginning, it was not what I had actually always wanted. As I said, I always wanted to be a journalist. So throughout the whole five years I was just coasting: read, go to tests, go for exams and pass.

Kolade: But it was when I actually got to law school, and after law school, during my NYSC, that law began to make sense to me. In undergraduate law, we are most likely just taught the theory, the substantive part of law. But it is in law school that you really get to see how it is done practically, how law affects the lives of people, how it affects everything from family to business to religion, basically everything. And then when I saw that play out in legal practice, the whole thing began to come together and make sense. Like, wow, this is actually a very interesting field.

Jii: That was very interesting. Like you said, a lot of Nigerian students who go through the Nigerian educational system, I do not think we necessarily enjoy the course or the programme we started with, except people who really wanted it. Sometimes I think that most people who set out to study law wanted to, but hearing you speak on it, it would make sense that most people would say, let me just do it, this is what seems prestigious.

Kolade: And I think, just like me, it later made sense to a lot of people actually. Because there are a lot of people who said during undergraduate, I am not going to practise, I am not going to practise, I do not like it. But then after law school, after NYSC, you see a lot of them going to court. Like it is for me, people later got interested because the whole thing actually made sense. A senior colleague told me back then that if we are to go by how law is being taught in undergraduate, you will lose interest. But when you get to law school and when you start practising, law will actually make sense to you and you will in fact enjoy practising.

Jii: Shout out to the senior colleague. Where did you go to law school?

Kolade: Lagos. The Lagos campus.

Jii: How was that?

Kolade: Out of all the seven law school campuses, Lagos campus is the toughest. It is like the concentration camp of all the law schools. So it was drilling, it was tough. One of the first things that caught a lot of us just coming from undergraduate is that the law school curriculum is very bulky. Extremely bulky. So we had to read like we had never read before, studying and a lot of other things. I had to stretch myself in a way I do not think I had stretched myself before. Law school was very tough. And the system of the Lagos campus itself is also very tough.

Kolade: Then another thing I took from law school, even though this is an aside from the whole learning experience, is just meeting people. Because law school is people from different universities, people who schooled in the north, the south, the southeast. They will distribute all of you to different areas of law school. And just seeing people from different universities, different experiences, different backgrounds. I also got to meet new people.

Kolade: And then also, the way law is taught at the undergraduate level goes on to determine some people's performance at law school. That is where the quality of your school comes into play. So maybe someone who went to one random state university and those of us who went to Unilag and OAU, when all of us are together in law school, the difference in performance shows.

Kolade: Sorry, just lastly. People say first class in a private school is a second class lower in a public school. Law school finally destroyed that bias for me, because private school students are absolutely brilliant. In fact, in my set, the best student in law school overall was a private school student.

Jii: That is funny, because that bias most times comes from survival and suffering. Somehow, we went to public universities and we think we have gone through a system that has shaped us. But when you look back, you realise the trauma: the lecturer who has not come to class, the way you have been taught, the conditions you have been taught in, the strikes. There is this false idea that I went through the system. But really, honestly, that is not the system. That is not a conducive environment to learn.

Jii: One thing I wanted to mention was, I think I have seen a couple of people who wanted to become journalists, mass comm. I think there is a slight overlap in terms of the research, the looking into the law, because journalists, aside from reporting, also do a lot of making sure everything is within the law. So they too need to understand the law. Did that play any part in what you are doing now?

Jii: Sorry to add, because you have written for Inskriba, I will put some of your essays up here. When I first read them, it makes sense now, you saying that you wanted to become a journalist, because of the way you write. It feels like truth-finding, or you are writing about something you are looking at. I do not know if that makes sense, but when I read it, it looks like you setting out to understand and help other people understand. So it makes sense now that your original passion was journalism.

Jii: How long have you been in law?

Kolade: Actually not for long. A year basically. I was called to the bar last year.

Kolade: You said something when I was talking about coasting through undergraduate, and you said five years plus strikes. That is what I wanted to point out. The five years, strikes, COVID-19, many times. If I go back to the year I started, I should probably be three or four years into law by now.

Kolade: Because I finished as at December 2019. Law is five years. And as at December 2019, I was done with 400 level.

Jii: So from 400 level to 500 level, it took you how many years?

Kolade: 500 level, law school, NYSC.

Jii: So ordinarily it should have taken you, because after 400 level it is just one year, one calendar year, and then law school. So technically it should have taken you about three years to complete. Well, I am not even going to calculate that.

Jii: One question I want to ask is how you see the law now, now that you are inside, now that you are in it and you are practising. What does the law actually look like from where you stand? And what do people get wrong about the law? Again, no legal advice. We are just understanding here.

Kolade: How the law looks from a lawyer's perspective. For a lawyer, really, the law is basically a means of setting human interactions right. It always sets human interactions right, because people will always be human. The law is our tool to monitor actions across different sectors, different institutions, whatever. The law is our means to guide and set things right. It is almost like whenever there is a falling out of line, with the law we can set things right, because there is a laid down rule.

Kolade: And then what people get wrong about law, or let me say Nigerians basically, is that Nigerians see law only from the lens of fight for my rights, or take vengeance against someone. And that is a very myopic way to view law. [inaudible] a tool to achieve whatever it is they want. That is very myopic, and it also makes a lawyer understand the kind of cases we see in court today. So that is how I see law actually, as a means of setting human interactions right.

Jii: I like that. I like the way you state it: a means of setting human interactions right. And before we close, because this is the intro episode, the first episode. When you say it is a means or a way to set human interactions right, one thing that came to my mind was a friend who would always say that Nigerian lawyers, all they do is one, charge and bail, two, land disputes. So he would always tell people who were in law at that time that there is no future for you. And that, again, we know is not understanding the profession, not understanding that everything we are doing revolves around law. But just to be clear, you people do more than charge and bail and land disputes.

Jii: Thank you again for coming. Do you have any other thing to add?

Kolade: Yes, I have some other things to add. That person is not entirely wrong, because [inaudible]. That is the majority of the issues that come.

Kolade: I wish more Nigerians understood the law better than we do in Nigeria. I would say Nigerians are underutilising law. They are not using law to its fullest, particularly as it concerns dispute resolution, protection of your legal rights, or just legal protection over your engagements. Because Nigerians are people who buy land as if they are buying [inaudible] in the market: transfer, and move in.

Kolade: Because there are legal protections for basically everything. Even the smallest things, even the most insignificant things in fact, there should be legal protection over everything, and Nigerians just do not.

Jii: They do not care, yeah.

Kolade: Nigerians only turn to law whenever something very important to them is at stake. When they are at risk of losing something, or they are at risk of not gaining something. Probably high-value transactions. The rich are the ones who understand the value of legal protection. The majority of Nigerians, they do not. And I think this conversation is very important, because a lot of people need to understand law in a new way, from the inside, rather than the old lawyers-are-liars kind of thing. They just need to understand what law is. And again, as I said, Nigerians are underutilising it.

Jii: Thank you for adding that. I am glad that you touched on how Nigerians understand law, underutilising law, and how they see it. Because what we see is, like you said, high income earners incorporate law into everything that they do to protect them. You talk to an ordinary Nigerian right now and say, have you spoken to your lawyer? One thing that comes to their head is, I do not have the money. Where are these rich people that use lawyers and stuff like that? And I do not even think it is only in Nigeria. It is not only in Nigeria. There is this socioeconomic response to law. You hear something about a lawyer and the first thing that comes to your head is, my God, what has happened, I am scared, and stuff like that. But I guess it is just the way people see it. And yeah, like you said, again, we are not trying to give legal advice, we are just trying to understand. And that is why you are here.

Jii: Thank you for explaining Barrister and Esquire. This is the first time I am hearing about the Supreme Court ruling on it.

Kolade: The case is called [inaudible]. They are actually distinct titles, separate, because a barrister is a lawyer who goes to court, while a solicitor is a lawyer who does not go to court. All of that was [inaudible] in Nigeria. So Barrister is more of a [inaudible] rather than an appellation. The actual appellation is Esquire.

Jii: That makes sense. Thank you again for coming in today. Like I said, this is Inskriba Conversations: How We Live, an Inskriba production. This conversation continues at inskriba.com.

Jii: And in my head, I am trying to say, should I say Barrister Adegbola?

Kolade: Kolade Adegbola, Esquire.

Jii: So I should just say your name with Esquire. Kolade Adegbola, Esquire. Right. Thank you, and see you in the next episode. Again, no legal advice, just understanding.