A lawyer’s daily tasks include researching cases, writing briefs, and giving advice to clients. These tasks are arguably being handled with greater speed with the use of technology today.
Robot law is an emerging specialist field and enthusiastic lawyers focus on the laws of robots or robotics with the anticipation that it would, notwithstanding, enhance their jobs. To fully deploy this system in Nigeria, a legal framework is required to deal with it. Christian Oti, an Abuja based lawyer is not comfortable with the technology. According to him, the said robot lawyer must also go through the educational training and get to be called to the Nigerian bar, if it must be allowed to operate in the country.
For Emmanuel Ekwe, also a lawyer, there’s no place for robotic lawyering under Nigeria’s legal system. He, therefore, suggested that it could best serve as a research assistant. “A robot cannot pass through the Nigerian Law School,” he declared. “Secondly, section 36 of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria , provides that every person is allowed to defend himself in person or through a legal practitioner.
His words: “The need for legal practitioners might dwindle if the robot has the ability to do everything that a lawyer can do. Also, non-legal practitioners might hide under section 36 of the Constitution to begin to do all that a legal practitioner would have done with the help of their robots.