Odujinrin and Adefulu, a renowned commercial law practice firm recently hosted a symposium with the future of legal practice in focus.
Themed ‘The Future of Legal Profession: The Next 50 Years’ recently in Lagos to commemorate its golden jubilee as a law firm.
The firm which had through the last fifty years set precedence for commercial law practice in Nigeria hosted the symposium to discuss the issues affecting legal professionals in Nigeria and what the future of legal practice holds particularly with regards to the adoption of technology and Artificial Intelligence in legal practice.
The keynote speech at the symposium was delivered by Daniel Susskind, best-selling author of ‘The Future of Professions (2015)’ and A World Without Work (2020) and was also joined by a panel of eminent practitioners.
According to Susskind, there is a cultural assumption that education should start early on in life. Rather, law schools must focus on when to teach instead of what to teach.
“They must now focus on when to teach, with flexibility of opportunities to professionals to retrain and re-skill along their careers. With so much digitization in the world today, many legal professionals often fear that there may be no use for them in the nearest future,” he said.
Susskind encouraged legal professionals to embrace technology instead of seeing it as the enemy.
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“Legal professionals need to be more customer-centric. A far more useful way to predict the future is to think of how we can deliver services to clients using technology,” Susskind stated.
The first-panel session of the symposium was themed ‘Business of Law through the years which saw Adeoye Adefulu, managing partner Odujinrin and Adefulu as the moderator; Sylvia Nzekwu, principal partner, Shan Consulting; George Etomi, founding partner George Etomi and Partners; Gbite Adeniji, Founding Partner, ENR Advisory; Andrew Skipper, Chair of Africa Practice, Hogan Lovells and Defolu Olufon, General Counsel First Exploration and Petroleum Development Company Limited, as panelists.
The panel spoke about how commercial law practice has evolved through the years. “The law practice is no longer how it used to be. There is always space for specialists, but you must know how to speak the language of the sector as clients are looking for a bespoke solution to their problem” Gbite Adeniji noted when asked about how commercial lawyers can serve their clients better.
Olubukola Olabiyi, the head of corporate commercial practice at the firm led the second-panel discussion on the topic ‘ Post-Pandemic: Navigating the Digital Age’. The panel of eminent professionals including Moe Odele; Founder of Vazi Legal, Rotimi Ogunyemi; Co-chair Digital NBA, Feizin Amlani discussed the effect of technology on the legal practice post-pandemic.
“Though lawyers may be experts in various fields, they’ve unfortunately not been taught marketing in Law schools. Lawyers, as rainmakers of their firm, must use social tools to network and attract clients for their firms,” Feizin, co-founder and CEO of Excellent Consulting stated.
