DELIVERY MODE [PART THREE]

Traditionally, legal education has been formalistic and expository as well as formative and practical. Traditional method of teaching and classroom approach hold sway. Until comparatively recent times, legal education could be obtained by oversea correspondence, part or full time oversea university education. Later the same facilities became locally available in dual mode institutions. The population and the demand for legal education grow at a faster rate than the essential infrastructure and other resources to support it. Qualified teachers are scarcer, national economic fortunes are dwindling. These coupled with the backlog of potential university undergraduates and of law graduates awaiting Call seem to justify alternative delivery modes for training the legal practitioners

The legal profession and the legal education probably did not envisage the present day increase in legal professional activities, prospects of regular continuing education or continuing demand for higher studies and the degree of expansion in nature and extent. It could not envisage and could not be structured to develop the practice of self learning, and computer based training via CD or outsourcing training to external vendors where justified. Furthermore, the reality of new material world, which was made possible by the law itself compels the legal profession, to decentralize and regroup according to fields of specialization with the view of merging into truly global law firms, operating on the global arena and offering integrated legal service. ‘Clients don’t want all the time delays and inefficiencies of dealing with half a dozen legal firms around the world. What they want is one firm which has the capacity to be a one -stop shop for all the corporate needs.’ This orientation requires legal education and training to reinforce it.

Legal Education through the Open and Distance learning (ODL) Mode

Considering the astronomical numbers of potential undergraduate excluded from their choice programmes of study in the university education system, the constraint of resources, the need for flexible tailor – made delivery of instruction with little disruption in the national , family and individual circumstances and taking advantages of the emerging information communication technologies (ICTs) in relation to Nigeria’s peculiar situation, Nigeria took the logical pathway – distance education method. In 1983 the Nigerian government enacted the National Open University Act, which set up the National Open University, a foremost university anchored by social justice, equity and equality and national cohesion through a comprehensive reach that transcends all barriers. The efficacy of the Open and Distance Learning as a viable alternative for teaching or learning law has become a commonplace while the revolution in information and communication technologies (ICTs) allows global access to materials by law students and practitioners in different parts of the world anytime, anywhere by the most appropriate means. The process eliminates the problems associated with the conventional mode of teaching and learning. It answers the yearnings for access to legal education that defies any environmental, social or cultural or other circumstantial barriers. It also answers the problem of the decline in the number of quality of Law teachers. 

Legal education has also grown transnational and confronts the legal practitioner with a variety of challenges, given the emergent rapid globalization and changes in world economic, political, technological and legal order. This necessitates increased flexibility and continuous learning. There is an upward trend of a cooperative relationship between home universities and several world class universities and institutions in Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States of America in areas of Law degree programmes as well as non-degree programmes.  Trans-nationalization legal education is inspired by economic possibilities of economic and growth of a global higher education market. As a mutually but an uneven advantageous partnership and alliance, there is a movement towards socio- cultural harmony. While English language has remained the language of the law, it is interesting to note that French, German and Chinese languages are increasingly spoken and taught. Because of the superior capital, resources, knowledge, information and skills, the more developed world countries are the active participants as well as the major beneficiaries of transnational legal education. It can be said that International legal education is a welcome development. It opens new opportunities for international collaboration, offers expertise which may not be locally available, provides an alternative route and opportunity to acquire legal education, enhances competition and contributes to individual and social transformation.

The international legal education also has areas of great concern. It lacks mutuality or reciprocity. For example there is London, Oxford and Cambridge Universities in Nigeria to name a few but there is no known Nigerian University in the United Kingdom, Asia or the Americas. The contents of lecture materials in those universities and their degree certificates are foreign based, with little local content, if at all. For example the foreign universities in Nigeria teach foreign Land law, Family law, Criminal law and law of Evidence rather than the laws of the recipient country. Back home they offer no aspect of Nigeria law in exchange. Although the English and the Nigerian laws were branches of the same tree in the colonial era, they are now different. Foreign based legal education is not socially but economically inspired; it is exorbitant and therefore restrictive and does not promise social justice. Any institution that charges exorbitant fees discriminates against the poor by reason of his or her being poor and in breaches of his her fundamental right.  The recipient country derives little or no economic benefit. The proceeds are not invested locally but are repatriated. There is little transfer of professionalism, overwhelming unbalanced knowledge sharing, and doubtful university quality and standards. The absence of any vigorous monitoring system is conspicuous. With this system it is obvious that there are three legal education processes producing two parallel columns of legal professionals: foreign based legal education offered locally, Legal education abroad and Indigenous legal education. All the processes yield valid and recognized certificates. All, except the graduate of a foreign based legal education offered locally may qualify for a license to practice as a legal practitioner in Nigeria. All, except the indigenous legal education are channels of international brain drain. 

Evidently, the transnational legal education in the fast globalizing world has not impacted equitably for want of commitment towards liberality, and mutual collaboration and cooperation. The debilitating strictures need to be removed so that the beneficiaries from any of the legal education processes can enjoy the privilege of equal access to the Nigerian Law School as well as to the Inns of Courts and hence practice in the collaborating countries. This demands articulation and restructuring of the existing legal education system 

Assessing legal education

Assessment is seen as crucial in any learning situation as a means of judging performance or ensuring that the outcomes of learning have been met. Assessment may be summative or formative and viewed from different phases and perspectives, ranging from out of school experiences, school based learning, outcome based performance in School, certification or the extent to which it serves as an Instrument for gaining entry into further education or career or community events. Feed forward and feedback on performance are additional factors for measuring the level of learning and training impact, or fulfillment of individual or corporate dreams. It is hardly possible to assert with any certainty the proportion, if any of the added values of improvement is attributable to the learning acquired; a number of factors, including past and present performances could have contributed to the measured improvement. 

In the early times the practice was education first, followed later by work. Education was seen as leading to improvement and employment ability of the workforce and social and economic condition. Learning can no longer be separated into compartments of a place and time to acquire knowledge and a place and time to apply knowledge and skills, particularly with the advent of self directed and virtual learning. Ideally, learning and teaching occur and ought to be assessed in different settings but, there has been no special laid down principle of good practices for assessing competences and accrediting learning outcomes in legal education. 

Examinations and certificates receive pre-eminence in assessing educational attainment, but they provide no full, true and realistic information about the learner. It makes little difference that the medium is proficiency Test or Aptitude test. Work place learning and the daily experience, which are the basis for taking decisions for the future, cannot be ascribed to ones course of legal education but the world at large for their learning. It cannot be denied that legal education encompasses some elements of conceptual understanding, critical thinking, reflective action, practical application of knowledge, informal learning systems, professional training. These are worthwhile. Nonetheless, it is impracticable to dissect ones total experience into different components and evaluate the contribution of each to the total assessment. 

It cannot be denied that in many respects the legal profession has been effective, particularly in bringing down dictatorship and enthroning the democracy and the rule of law. It also has a reasonably effective disciplinary mechanism and complaints system. Even in these areas, there is still need to chart a path of improvement both in the nature and extent of what it offered to the society. Public access to legal and advice services and provision and organization of the legal aid services have not effectively solved the problem of providing legal services to the poor, marginalized and insecure people, nor the problem of bringing social justice to the socially excluded by reason of the frustration, worries and hardships arising from a combination of lack of access to basic essentials of life (e.g. education, housing, health, food and gainful employment), family conflict and relationship difficulties, chores of everyday life, crimes and criminality. The rights of the physically challenged and the vulnerable are yet to be fully and satisfactorily internalized.

Conclusion

An attempt has been made in this paper to assess the legal education, method and practice in Nigeria. The Legal education is a colonial heritage and post independence governments enacted laws regulating the legal education and training of legal practitioners. 

The objective of the legal education is to provide a legal profession that is appropriate and relevant to the Nigerian society, to produce competent manpower for the legislative and executive and manage the institutions of justice and to buttress government efforts in maintenance of law and order. Autochthony of legal education received little or no consideration. Rather, the existing alien legal education system was adapted as far as practicable to local needs. It faced new crimes of industrialized world and of international and transnational dimension, complex problems of accelerated political, social, economic, cultural, intellectual and technological development in a fast growing economy, which it did not anticipate. Furthermore, globalization has created the need for a continuous training in order to promote and sustain inter and intra-national socio-economic and legal order. 

Legal education, in response, focused on academic excellence, rigid university admission criteria. A Law degree is the single entry qualification to the legal profession. Appointments to the Bench or as Senior Advocates require no specific course of legal education or training but there are laid down criteria, the application of which is not justifiable.  There is frustration among the new law graduates, who do not find places in the Law School by reason of inadequate infrastructures. Legal education delivery system is formalistic and expository. Currently, there is no differentiation in the curriculum of persons who desire to be solicitors, solicitors and advocates, or pursue a career at the Bar or in the Bench or other calling. 

Recommendation 

Legal education system needs to be reformed in order to meet with the challenges of global competitiveness, the demands of contemporary legal environment, continuing innovative professional orientation and re-orientation.  An organized system of pupilage, staggered post- call training courses especially for lawyers who aspire to positions in the Bench or the honor of the Silk and a mutual legal education and exchange of programmes and students should be encouraged. The Legal education should be a lifelong activity and should be designed to accommodate new and modern developments to avoid becoming sterile and divorced from its milieu. There should be a full and unfettered legal educational opportunity devoid of all manner of exclusion. This can be achieved where there is a synergy between the flexibility and intensive use of information and communication technology offered by OD-el and the traditional or conventional system.