The Nigerian Lawyer

The Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association is currently in progress in Lagos, Nigeria. The theme for the conference this year is Underdeveloped Nations, Failed Economies and the Future of the Legal Profession. The Nigerian Lawyer sat down to a chat with George Etomi who is the present Chairman of the NBA’s Section on Business Law and a range of subjects were discovered.

Sir, I would like to know how you got interested in Commercial law in the first place.

There was an element of chance or luck, influence and perhaps fate. Generally, I took an interest in commercial law subjects at the undergraduate level; my favourite subjects were Company Law, Law of Contracts, Equity and Trust and Insurance Law.

Then I went for a Masters’ degree at the London School of Economics where we were given six weeks to choose our areas of interest from several courses. I initially chose Company Law, Insurance, Civil Litigation and a fourth subject. We were allowed six weeks – an experimental period and we submitted the four subjects at the end of that period. I attended classes in all the four subjects but included International Economic Law and the Law of Business Taxation. At the end of the experimental period, I narrowed down my choice to Company Law, Insurance Law, International Economic Law and Law of Business Taxation; all squarely commercial law subjects.

My primary interest was to teach and I got appointed to the Faculty of Law of the University of Lagos but barely stayed there before I met Udoma (now Senator and one of my closest friends) who been teaching there for about three months before I began. He basically discouraged me from teaching and gave me the address of Chris Ogunbanjo and Co. I went there and met Chief Ogunbanjo and after the necessary interviews, I started working there.

Chris Ogunbanjo at the time, without a shadow of doubt, had the most vibrant Commercial Law practice in Nigeria. The opportunity to work directly with such a great man largely influenced my career because at Chris Ogunbanjo & Co we were exposed to the best and most esoteric areas, of Commercial Law practice. So when I left to found George Etomi & Partners (GE&P) in 1984, there was little surprise that I got stuck with Commercial law.

When you started, it was not a very popular area of practice; how was your journey? Did you face a lot of difficulties in the way?

When I started practice in 1984, Nigeria was going through a recession [these recessions have a cycle, they come and go]. At that time I did question the wisdom of leaving a secure employment to go into the field. It was not easy but first, but I had a determination not to fall below the standard I had been used to. Therefore locating my office in Ikoyi as I did was part of that determination. The rent did not come cheap; I first started by sharing a building with a dental office. I did a lot of running around because I quickly discovered that I had converted from being paid to actually paying other people. I had to go lobby for work, see it done to the highest professional standard, and get paid for it. In addition I had to administer the office. So the challenges were enormous; even NEPA did not make it easy because of the poor power situation I had to get a generator which I had not originally budgeted for. But I learnt to be resilient and formed the singular determination not to give up

It is obvious to see from your Parkview address that the hard work and determination paid off in the long run. But how long did it take to see the dividends of your labour?

It is difficult in practice to measure dividends; the determination is to stay in business. Commercial law practice is tied to the fortunes of the economy; when it booms, business booms. When there is a recession, it affects us the same way. One thing I learnt quickly in practice is that law is life and it encompasses every area of human endeavour so we find that even in difficult times e.g. recession, there is plenty of room for Insolvency practice. So it is important for Lawyers to keep reinventing themselves to stay in business. One way to benchmark how well we have done is that what started as a solo practice now has three branches including Port Harcourt and Abuja with nearly 30 lawyers spread across the practice. Of course we will continue to maintain our resolve to be relevant and to continue to adapt to the emerging global situation in relation to legal practice.

I asked the last question because most lawyers fresh out of law school dream of either earning a 5-figure salary or of making it big overnight. From your own personal experience, is this a right approach?

Wrong. Very wrong. It does not work that way. I have always advocated that we must begin to look at law practice as a business; which is anything you use to earn your living. Things do not just happen because you are a lawyer. This was how we thought in the early days; that being a lawyer made things happen with little or no effort. A lawyer who wants to make it or who wants to open his own law firm must get the rudiments of business, which you don’t get in law school. I attended the Lagos Business School executive course and it has proved very helpful in shaping my law practice.

Globalization is a buzzword and the incidents that affected law practice in our times, are different from what happens now. It presents new threats and opportunities. Some respond to these threats by becoming bigger and some are specializing. But whatever path you choose, there is no substitute for hard work. You can stay there and wish yourself anything you wish but it’s not going to happen because you wished it, but because you stayed focused and determined. There were periods when I practically had to sleep out of my briefcase. Communication is better now but then you had to travel with minimum information so it was virtually impossible to plan trips and you ended up spending so much time travelling.

My advice to young lawyers is this: Young Lawyers pay your dues. It will not just happen because you wish it.

You are the current chairperson of the Nigerian Bar Association’s Section on Business Law – you were more or less the propeller; what made you so passionate about this Section?

I have an innate passion for continuous professional development; maybe it is rooted in my deep interest in teaching but I learnt at a very early age from my dad that knowledge is power and that those who continuously improve on their knowledge base are more likely to make advancement in life. If you read as I do the biographies of very successful men, one thing that is common to them is their unquenchable thirst to know.

Secondly I love sharing knowledge. So when I got involved in the Bar activities and was made chairman of the Dinner Committee of the Lagos Bar about 10 years ago, I saw that with the right sort of leadership at the bar, you could get lawyers to be more involved in determining their destiny. One way to achieve this is to continuously update themselves about developments in the profession. My exposure to the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) at that time also opened my eyes to the failure of the NBA at that time, to give complete cover to all facets of its members. For example those of us in the Corporate Law world were treated like outsiders to the NBA and I felt the NBA was not getting the complete benefit of its members. Most of this was due to the origin of the NBA which was an activist group fighting for independence. But times have changed now and it simply needed to broaden its umbrella to accommodate non-litigation lawyers.

The NBA is an organization that is larger than life; it cuts across all the other professions. We thought the way it could show its full face was to harness the entire spectrum of lawyers because it was slowly losing this batch of non-litigation practitioners.

The need for change started when OCJ Okocha, SAN was President of the NBA and he was favourably disposed to the idea. The NBA constitution was consequently amended to allow for the creation of Sections. So he basically set the machinery in motion and Wole Olanikpekun, SAN embraced the idea too and set up another committee which recommended for the creation of the Section on Business Law (SBL) and the Section on Legal Practice (SLP) in line with what obtains in the International Bar Association (IBA). When this was done, Yusuf Ali SAN became the first Chairman of the SLP while I was Chairman of the SBL.

I attended the 4^th Business Law Conference and one thing which struck me was the enormous international presence. How was that possible? Bearing in mind that the international community is quite wary when it comes to anything coming out of Nigeria.

We had our maiden conference in 2006, after the formal inauguration of the SBL. It was a 2-day all plenary affair but you could have sliced through the hunger for knowledge. That first conference was what reinforced my desire to press for Continuing Legal Education (CLE) because the conference was attended by Justices of the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, and High Court. Industry was fully represented as well as Policy makers and Regulators. It could be seen that Nigerians clearly are a hard working people. We keep receiving negative press worldwide and this is partly because we do not hype what is good that can come out of here. So I decided that even if it was in my sphere, I could do that with our Business Law Conferences.

The presence of increasing numbers of foreign participants is testimony that we are doing something right. To date we have had four such conferences. In fact, in 2007 the Keynote Speech was delivered by Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka. In 2008 it was delivered by Nana Akufo Addo, former Attorney General of Ghana, who lost narrowly at the last presidential election in that country. And this year, 2009, the Keynote speech was delivered by Mr. Fernando Pombo, immediate past president of the IBA.

The Law Society of England and Wales, the American Bar Association and the Commonwealth Lawyers Association and very lately, Law Asia have become very interested in collaborating with the NBA.

It is therefore not surprising that each year tends to be better than the preceding one. I must give credit to the chairpersons and members of the SBL committees through whom most of our activities are done. They develop the subject matters, topics, invite the speakers and generally take care of all the loose ends. So when international delegates come and see how well organised and truly international our standards are I always remember these colleagues who go out of their way to ensure that the NBA puts its best foot forward.

The SBL has also benefited from a very vibrant council and the hardest working committees and I single out Mrs Mfon Usoro who was chairperson of the 2009 conference, which everyone acknowledged is the best so far.

What difference has IT in general and the internet in particular made in your practice?

The internet has totally changed the landscape of legal practice and I recall when Udoma and I were at Chris Ogunbanjo and co., we tried to introduce the use of word processors at the time to our practice but we achieved little success with it. Then, everyone had to beg typists to help with typing long agreements often in triplicates and quadruplicates etc and any slight mistake meant you had to start all over. You appeared very busy in the office but proof reading took a good chunk of our time. So when I started GE&P, I was determined that every lawyer was going to be responsible for the work they did so we train every lawyer to become adept at using the computer and to be generally IT savvy. For me personally, with my blackberry, I have my office in my palm and can work anywhere. In fact, I tend to get a lot more work done when I am travelling because of my blackberry – as long as there is network along the road.

There is no doubt that IT has changed the landscape completely and my advice to young lawyers is that to compete, they must become IT knowledgeable. Even the Parent body the NBA can cope with its ever increasing number of practice lawyers (over 50,000 by the last count) through the use of IT. So IT is indispensable for modern law practice.

I am aware that your firm George Etomi and Partners are actively involved in the Telecom Industry. How far has that industry come? Are we at par with the rest of the world or do we still have a long way to go?

The Telecoms Act was a product of a private member’s bill; Hon. Nduka Irabor, who used to be the chairman of the House committee on Telecommunication and whose passion for creating an enabling legal and regulatory framework for that industry is most commendable, actually worked with our firm to realise that Bill. We were so impressed by his patriotism that the firm [GE&P] actually worked pro bono to see that that Bill defeated the Executive Bill, which sought to leave too much power in the hand of the Minister. Paul Usoro and co worked with the Senate Committee and at some point, we harmonised the positions of the House and the Senate to produce what even the most critical of Industry watchers today agree is the best thing to happen to the Telecoms Industry. I believe that for the Telecoms Industry, the focus should be on the Regulator and the Minister should always be in charge of Policy. As you would have noticed, the faceoff between the NCC and the Minister recently about the 3G licenses clearly bears this point. It is a frightening proposition for the Minister to interfere with how the Telecoms Industry works outside of Policy. Today, the Telecoms Sector is the only public sector that is really working because it is the only truly deregulated sector. It is therefore not surprising that it is the one industry that continuously attracts genuine foreign investment into the economy. This is due to the legal and regulatory framework.

You were recently in Kuala Lumpur to deliver a paper at the Law Asia conference. What lessons can the Nigerian Bar learn from their Asian Counterparts?

I do not know about learning, but I know that collaboration between the NBA and other Bar Associations will produce benefits to both parties. I attended the Bar leaders meeting at that conference [Law Asia] and represented the President of the NBA. It was interesting to see the challenges that some countries face and the role the Bar is playing to help them. I was surprised to find out that there are some countries that do not have Bar Associations and some, where the practice of law is not even encouraged and lawyers go through all manner of harsh treatment. Conferences like this [Law Asia] allow for exchange of ideas as to how Bar Associations the world over can support themselves.

Malaysia is a wonder story and one worth emulating. I am glad that the immediate past President of the Malaysian Bar Association honoured our invitation to attend the 4^th Business Law Conference of the NBA and I hope that the NBA would continue to spread its influence to the Far East.

You wear several hats; husband, father, Lawyer, Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association’s Section of Business Law, just to mention a few. How do you successfully juggle these?

It’s called juggling. Whatever I do, I try to maintain a balance between the home front and my professional obligation. I thank God for a most supportive wife and family. She is also a Lawyer but we have an unspoken agreement not to take work home so we can focus on each other and the family. And because I also travel a lot, we tend to treasure whatever time we have with each other when I am around.

As boss in the office and managing the SBL, I give a lot of my time and resources to ensuring that the SBL is put on a footing that is of international standard and to ensure that continuity exists.

Then I teach at the Nigerian Institute Of Advanced studies. I am one of the resource persons there and I enjoy doing this. I am also involved in a lot of other professional obligations so I am constantly juggling.

On a personal level I do a lot of philanthropic work; I have a foundation which I run with my twin brother, Dr. Mike Etomi. It is our way of giving back. The foundation is about alleviating the poverty of the Niger Delta people especially those caught in the oil saga. The foundation has a branch in the US and we are working with many good people.

I do not have too many direct business concerns though people do not believe me when I say this. It is true though; however, I do have investments here and there.

Church – I am a Vicar’s warden so that means I am deeply involved with the church. I was also the People’s Warden. I really treasure this religious aspect of my life because it completes my balancing act. As you grow older it is important to know where your priorities lie and to get closer to your Maker.

I noticed it is easy to walk up to you and start a discussion; you are very approachable. What is your reason for this?

It is a matter of my background. I worked with Chief [Ogunbanjo] who is not only a good lawyer but one of God’s best creations. He shared knowledge and was never afraid to expose you to his best clients or anything like that. If you grow up with that background it would be a disservice to hold information close to your chest. So I run an open door policy. If you want your message to be heard, the less mystery and obstacles you create, the better. I am also pretty hands-on and it is inspirational for the people I work with.

And finally, what is the one gadget you would rather not live without?

My Blackberry. When I am in the car, I am making quick responses especially if working with international clients. They do not understand why they have to wait three, four days to get a reply. And except I need to do a particular cross reference, I can easily give a functional opinion. I work on the go.

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Posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 10:59 am in Legal Personality, Spotlight   |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback URL