Q & A Session with Alex Mouka and Mark Slade

Lawyers, under the aegis of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and stakeholders in the country’s judiciary gathered on Thursday, 9th of July, 2015 to brainstorm the impact of information and communication technology on the legal profession.

The maiden edition of the event; the e-Legal conference, was organized by Nigeria’s fastest growing online community of Legal Professionals, thelearnedfriend.com, themed, “Tomorrow’s Legal’’. It held at Lagos Court of Arbitration, International Centre for Arbitration and ADR.

Thelearnedfriends.com is an online aggregator and social media platform focused on showcasing technological innovations in the legal sector. According to the Managing Director, Mrs. Abiola Obileye, “the nature of legal services is changing as more legal businesses are incorporating technology and digital.”

The Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Lagos Branch, Mr. Alex Mouka, delivered the keynote address at the event, where he advised lawyers to embrace the fusion between information and communication technology (ICT), and legal professionals. He added that technology solutions are available to all legal firms regardless of their budgets.

Chief Bolaji Ayorinde, SAN, another key speaker acknowledged the intellectual capacity of Nigerian lawyers and shared that the conference is sure to rouse innovation in the country’s judiciary, to a scale comparable to international legal set ups. Other speakers at the conference included: Mr. Femi Ojumu, who unbundled the expression ICT and characterized it as a physical or web-based configuration which facilitates the use, exploitation, mining, storage and transfer of data that’s underpinned by scientific expertise.

Dean of Student Affairs, Covenant University, Azubuike Ezenwoke, explained how the next generation of lawyers should be trained on acquiring problem solving skills including competencies dependent on access to accurate, timely, sufficient, reliable and relevant information.

The conference ended with the CEO of Ringier Digital Marketing painting a graphic picture of the growth of internet penetration in Africa and concluded that Nigeria has the highest number of internet users, Facebook users and active mobile in the continent. He emphasized the relevance of ICT in the 21st century legal practice; while advising firms to reduce its overhead by operationalizing internal business processes through ICT, commercial logic and practical economics.  

 

thelearnedfriends Author

Get the best African tech newsletters in your inbox