At the 2025 Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Dr. Tominiyi Owolabi, Managing Partner at Olaniwun Ajayi LP, delivered a thought-provoking presentation titled “Building the Future Firm: Internationalising and Future-Proofing the Nigerian Legal Market.”
Dr. Owolabi painted a sobering yet hopeful picture of Nigeria’s legal landscape. Despite having the largest bar on the African continent, Nigeria remains underrepresented in high-value cross-border transactions. In the past five years, foreign law firms have led over 70% of Africa’s biggest deals, while Nigerian firms rarely feature as lead counsel.
He highlighted the paradox of scale versus value: Nigeria produces more lawyers annually than any other African country, yet the market remains fragmented, dominated by small firms with limited international recognition. With nearly 2,900 law firms in Nigeria, only about 25 are considered internationally acclaimed, leaving the majority of practitioners competing in a saturated, low-value market.
On talent, Dr. Owolabi underscored Nigeria’s brain drain challenge. While the country produces thousands of lawyers yearly, poor pay and limited career development drive many to seek opportunities abroad. “We are training lawyers for export,” he observed, noting that 84% of ranked Nigerian lawyers leave and do not return.
Another critical gap lies in technology adoption. While global leaders have embraced artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and advanced e-filing systems, Nigeria’s legal sector lags behind with less than 15% adoption of modern legal tech. This deficiency further weakens competitiveness in an increasingly digitalized global market.
Drawing lessons from India’s transformation into a global legal powerhouse, Dr. Owolabi advocated for consolidation of firms into larger, specialized practices, expansion into pan-African and international hubs, deeper investment in legal technology, and stronger policy support. He argued that if Nigerian firms act strategically, they could capture over $40 billion in high-value deals currently being handled by foreign firms.
He proposed a “Five S” framework — Standards, Scale, Systems, Showcase, and Shield, as a pathway to elevate Nigerian firms from local counsel to global lead counsel. According to him, building scale must go hand-in-hand with visible standards of excellence in client service, ethics, and innovation.
The presentation closed with a call for collective action: policy reforms, institutional investment in legal tech, peer benchmarking, stronger continuing professional development, and cross-border alliances. “The business of law is already a trillion-dollar global industry,” Dr. Owolabi noted. “Nigeria cannot afford to be left behind. The time to build the future firm is now.”
