LEGAL EDUCATION IN NIGERIA: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

The study of law like the study of any other subject or discipline has to be in the light of prevailing circumstances of each particular society and time. This is because law is a living subject. It grows with the time and dies with the time. That is to say, what is law today may not be law tomorrow. Conversely, what is not law today may become law tommorrow. This uncertain state of what law is or is not at one particular time, is determined by human activities which are themselves not fixed, certain or definite. It is because of the diversity and flexibility of human conduct that the law which governs them has to be flexible, depending on the time, the facts and the circumstances. For these reasons, the responsibility to mould law so as to match the needs of each particular exigency does not lie either with the legislative dexterity of our legislators and the competence of our judges to interpret, construe and construct our laws, but on the law teaachers, who come first in the scheme of responsibility of baking the lawyer. This paper, therefore tries to explore the problems of legal education in Nigeria from three perspectives. First, the paper will try to highlight deficiencies in our law courses both in the past and at present. Secondly, the paper would examine the past and the present method of teaching law in our classrooms with special reference to the method of legal reasoning and analysis. Thirdly, the paper will try to proffer suggestions as to what it thinks the method of teaching legal education should be in the future.