Judicial Reform: Body of Benchers cracks down on charge-and-bail lawyers

By Ikechukwu Nnochiri The Body of Benchers (BoB), the apex regulatory body for the legal profession, has vowed to wield the big stick to check what it termed the embarrassing conduct of charge-and-bail lawyers. The body is responsible for the call of graduates of law school to the Nigerian Bar as well as the regulation of the legal profession in Nigeria. The BoB expressed concerns about the quality and standard of those admitted to practice law in the country, at a three-day Call to Bar ceremony that saw the induction of 6,010 new wigs.

The occasion, held in Abuja from July 7 to 10, further swelled the population of lawyers in the country, which was previously estimated at about 250,000 practitioners. In an address presented by its Chairman and Life Bencher, HRM Albert Akpomuje, SAN, the BoB blamed universities for the bloated population of lawyers. It deprecated the deliberate practice of some accredited university law faculties admitting students in excess of their allocated quota for law programmes.

Consequently, the legal body disclosed that a committee has been set up to streamline and recommend the number of aspirants to be called to the Bar in any given year. It attributed the dwindling professionalism among lawyers to the shortage of jobs caused by the astronomical annual increase in the number of law graduates and those seeking admission to the Bar. “The Body of Benchers cannot afford to produce lawyers when there are not enough jobs to accommodate them, hence the need to regulate and put a benchmark on those to be called in any given year.

“This will also take care of situations where members of the Bar, after call, tout for briefs with no office, at the Magistrate Courts, waiting at the police stations, and earn the embarrassing name popularly known as charge-and-bail lawyers,” the legal body stated. Continuing, it said: “As a regulatory body, we owe a duty to the Government, the people of this country, and, in particular, the noble profession of law, to ensure that admission into this honourable profession does not become an all-comers affair, as this will inevitably have the propensity to reduce the standard expected from this noble profession. “Apart from just calling persons to the Bar, the Body of Benchers is very concerned with the quality and standard of those admitted to the Bar to practise law in Nigeria.