Law Technology

Not "Casual Day" in a Nigerian Law Classroom

By JohnPMayer

Yesterday, I visited the Kano Campus of the Nigerian Law School. Kano is in the north of Nigeria and is NIgeria's second most populous city after Lagos. The law school is a long way away from the city center and resides on a large and beautiful campus of a former conference center/resort.

My estmeed host, Professor Nasirdeen Usman took me on a thorough tour of the place which is undergoing much renovation (and much needed). We interrupted a class on Evidence that was being taught to the 400 students and since it was Monday, I took a picture to contrast to the "casual day" picture from my last post.

As you can see, the status quo is black suites, white shirts and black ties. Women dress in business black for class. The temperature in the room was around 70 degrees Farenheit - actually cold to the Nigerians. During the rainy season, it can get quite hot and damp. The students were not "kids" either. Most looked to be in the their 30's or 40's and upon questioning I learned that this is true of most law students at the Nigerian Law Schools. Many government officials, policemen and former military go to law school.

Legal Education in Nigeria is a combination of a mandatory undergraduate degree - called an LLB which takes four years. During the LLB students learn the basics of law. This seems to be a combination of an undergraduate degree and the required courses of law school - lots of doctrine and memorization. After passing their LLB, there is no competitive exam like the LSAT to be accepted into the Nigerian Law School - just quotas. Eventually, you have to be accepted to Nigerian Law School and as a result, enrollments have been increasing at NLS campuses. This is one of the reasons that they are teaching to rooms full of 1000 students at a time.

There are efforts to hire more faculty. The original plan that got the NLS launched allowed for the hiring of one or two faculty per major subject area with most faculty being able to teach two different major subjects. All four campuses of the NLS have (almost) exactly 14 faculty whether they teaching 1400 students (Lagos) or 400 students (Kano).

Can technology help with this? That's one of the questions I have been pressed to answer. My initial answer was a flat "no" - they need more faculty and smaller class sizes. Technology can help in the development of materials, the delivery of computer-assisted legal education and such and these resources can be factored in to the curriculum re-design, but technology is certainly no magic bullet.

Full post as published by CALIopolis on January 22, 2008 (boomark / email).