Lawyers privileges committee reviews guidelines for aspiring SANs

    
The Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee has released new guidelines for the conferment of the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria on aspiring lawyers.

The application fee for the rank has been raised from N250,000 to N300,000.

This was disclosed in a copy of the guidelines, which was obtained by journalists on Sunday.

It was gathered that a committee which was set up to review the guidelines had recommended the sum of N500,000 as application fee.

The Chairman of the LPPC and Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Aloma Mukhtar, rejected the proposed N500,000 application fee, arguing that it was too high, although the committee had justified the proposal by linking it to the high cost of conducting chambers inspections across the country.

Other changes in the new guidelines include a provision which empowered the committee to suspend a legal practitioner who is facing any form of disciplinary action, complaint or prosecution, from using the rank of SAN, pending the determination of the matter.

The new guidelines also introduced an earlier commencement of the application process.

Notice for applications will now be issued not later than January 7th each year, unlike the previous arrangement whereby such notices are sent out not later than January 31st.

In the same vein, applicants are now required to provide certified true copies of complete record of trial proceedings in at least five cases they handled at the high court from filing stage to judgment, in order to prove that they conducted the trial throughout.

The new guidelines also introduced changes in applications from academics.

Such applicants must now show that their publications were published by reputable publishers, whose reputation shall be assessed and determined by the Academic sub-committee.

Criteria used to evaluate an applicants competence were retained in the new guidelines.

These are, integrity 25 per cent, judges’ opinion 15 per cent, knowledge of law 15 per cent, contribution to the development of the law 10 per cent, leadership qualities 10 per cent, strength and quality of reference 15 per cent and quality of law office 10 per cent.