I was in court yesterday and as I was addressing the court in counter to my opponent’s argument, I suddenly needed a fresh case as an authority to back up my argument and I quickly typed the topic in question into my online law report while I was still on my feet addressing the court and I was immediately fed with a plethora of cases relating to the issue at hand which I was able to use dislodge my opponent’s counter argument.
This scenario got me thinking about how difficult and mechanical life must have been for lawyers before the advent of online law reports. Just imagine me on that spot trying to flip through the pages of bogus law reports in search of a relevant case as a counter to my opponent’s point, whilst still on my feet. I would have wasted so much time of the court and I could even be cited for contempt.
It will therefore be fair to say that one of the best things that have happened that has helped in the advancement and development of the law practice in Nigeria is the advent of online case and law reports. I can not even begin to imagine how difficult and primitive life was with lawyers in Nigeria in the 50s up till the early 2010s before technology became popular and lawyers began to adopt and utilize online case reports in Nigeria.
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Just imagine the time that was spent (wasted) glossing through different hard copies of bogus and voluminous law reports in search of one case as an authority to back up an argument; how many briefs can you as a lawyer be able to work on in a day if you have to always dash in and out of the library to read through pages of hard copies of cases?
Let us not even forget the cost these digital law reports have saved lawyers. A set of hard-copy foreign law reports currently costs about four million naira while a set of hard-copy local law reports costs over a million niara. How many lawyers can be able to afford that, especially young lawyers starting up their practice or indigent lawyers?
You can just type the topic you need a case to back up on online law reports and in nanoseconds, you are fed with a plethora of cases for you to choose from. The digital law report can even summarize a case for you if you need the summary of the case and refer you to other cases if you need more.
I was telling a senior lawyer friend about digital law reports and how much they have made law practices easier, cheaper and more interesting. I told him that now, he does not necessarily need to go to the library and flip through voluminous law reports just to read through a case when he can just type in the case in his online law report and in nanoseconds he can see the whole law report but he told me that if it is not a hardcopy, whatever he reads doesn’t feel like he has read about it.
This is the case with many lawyers of older generations who are conservatives. They will find it difficult adapting and adopting to technology. The prefer the rigorous work of flipping through the pages of the hard copy law reports; that gives them the feeling of being “the law” but technology is here and has penetrated the law practice and the earlier lawyers adopt the better. There is even a technology that helps lawyers arrange and sort through their case files on the cloud instead of stacking the whole shelf with papers.
Kudos to Law Pavilion which took the lead in providing digital law reports for legal practitioners in Nigeria, kudos to Nigerian Weekly Law Report (NWLR), the leading (hard copy) law report in Nigeria that has decided to follow the leading of technology and adapt some of their law reports into electronic format. Kudos to every other law report that is going digital as well; you all have made life easier and cheaper for lawyers in Nigeria.
