Building a Culture of Pro-Bono in Nigeria

Executive Summary

The Justice Research Institute (JRI) with the support from the Open Society Institute West Africa (OSIWA) is implementing the project – BUILDING A CULTURE OF PRO–BONO IN NIGERIA. 

The purpose of the project is primarily, to promote the pro-bono culture in Nigeria and facilitate an intentional system that organises relevant resources and stakeholders to support socially vulnerable, poor, indigent, and disadvantaged members of Nigerian society to access legal aid and services.

A key component of the project is a needs assessment study to understand and document the justice gap related to the provision of pro-bono legal services to indigent citizens of the focal states – Abuja, Kaduna and Osun State.  

The findings from the study are as follows:

1. Requests made to Government agencies for pro-bono services were more than those made to NGO’s and Law firms.  Survey showed that 66.67% (figure 83) receive an average of 20-50 requests on a monthly bases, 84% (figure 100) of NGOs receive an average of 1-20 requests on a monthly basis, while only 6% (figure 44) of law firm respondents receive more than 10 requests on a monthly basis. The perception of law firms as mainly profit oriented and Government agencies and NGOs as non-profit oriented is responsible for this scenario. This therefore throws up the need for awareness creation for the public to understand that law firms can also venture into some non-profit oriented ventures such as pro-bono services.
2. It was comforting to note that most law firm respondents (26 of 33) have embraced the culture of contributing to public good through provision of free legal services. 26 of the 33 respondent law firms indicated that they provide pro-bono services as Corporate Social Responsibility.  (Figure 39).  
3. A good pro-bono culture, with lawyers and NGOs taking up criminal cases for people who are unable to afford legal representation, will no doubt, further entrench the protection of basic human right and access to justice as a whole. For example, over 50% of the respondents who are judicial officers attested to unnecessary delay in criminal trials involving awaiting trial prison inmates, owing mainly to the various levels of frequency in incidences of adjournment of trials (with the attendant continued incarceration of the defendant in the prison and the continued over-population of the prisons) because of lack of legal representation in court on the day of trial. Figure 70 is very instructive in this regard.
4. It was not encouraging to find that as much as 87% of respondents are yet to benefit from pro-bono services (figure 17). However, a very positive revelation from the survey, is that 65% of respondent who made the move to request for free legal services, benefited from the pro-bono service, and their needs were met (figure 15). This however does not erode the fact that there are still a lot of unmet needs, which borders largely on accessing the pro-bono service (where available) and knowing what to do to have access.  
5. With respect to challenges faced by Lawyers and NGOs in their quest to provide free legal services, inadequate financial and human resources rank highest. See figure 49 & 107.   
6. The ad-hoc arrangement for pro-bono service offered by law firms and the attendant lack of proper structure and proper record keeping are issues requiring attention so as to facilitate monitoring and proper implementation of pro-bono services.  
7. In determining whether a person is indigent as to be eligible for receipt of free legal services, the level of income and employment status are the most prevalent considerations by Law firms, NGOs and even Government Agencies (see figures 51,93 & 98). This may not be far-fetched, in that Section 9 of the primary piece of legislation for Legal Aid (the Legal Aid Act), in its narrow application, contemplates that only persons whose income do not exceed the national minimum wage of N18,000 are eligible to receive free legal services.
8. Compared to NGOs and Law firms, government agencies appear to have handled the most cases. See Fig. 79, 101 and 36. However, some of the possible clients still fall through the crack and do not get to the point of service as reported by the respondents from the government agencies in Fig. 87. There is also a huge gap in provision of pro bono services to indigents on commercial cases unlike the case of the law firms that have provided most pro bono services on tenancy matters. See Fig. 91, 92 and 53.
9. What is by far the most important finding from this survey is that the level of public awareness of Law firms, NGOs and Government Agencies providing probono service is still low.  64% of respondents are not aware of pro-bono services at all. Figure 19 & 21 are instructive.

Having documented the challenges impeding the effectiveness of pro-bono services as a means to ensuring access to justice, the research demonstrates that dealing with the access to justice problem, through the instrumentality of an efficient pro-bono mechanism will therefore require a multifaceted approach, which will require strong and effective partnerships with private attorneys, law firms, NGOs providing free legal services, the organised bar, the judiciary, academic institutions (universities/law school), private funders, business entities, donors and development agencies and other critical stakeholders.